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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is one of those beautiful books that captures a small but representative sliver of life. I’m always in awe of books that portray life in all its horrific, capricious, hilarious complexity. I tend to hyperbolize in my writing; Sherman Alexie has managed to mingle a humorous love of life with mind-numbing tragedy in a way that makes me painfully envious.

I highly recommend The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It’s an excellent read, and the comics interwoven with the text are hilarious.

I’ve been meaning to read Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies for years but kept forgetting to buy it. I finally stumbled across it in Barnes and Noble the other day, though, and gave it a read.

It was a mixed bag. Fire Bringer was a fun read, but it didn’t tread any new ground. It’s very similar to Watership Down, both in anthropomorphic animals and content (deer in unholy contracts with humans, etc.), with a little Nazi fascism mixed in for good measure. A decent book, but one that I probably won’t reread in the near future.

I broke my own rule and bought a book with the word “chronicles” on the cover. Normally, this means that I’m in for a mediocre book with a cliff-hanger ending. With The Shadow Thieves by Anne Ursu it meant I was in for an exciting romp through Greek mythology with an extremely satisfying plot.

I highly recommend The Shadow Thieves. There’s some points where the pacing is a bit slow, but Anne Ursu’s voice and style keep you interested. This is a very worthwhile, casual read.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Ian who bought a book with “chronicles” on the cover and didn’t get burned…

HarperCollins has a web program called Browse Inside that allows you to browse books on your computer before buying them. Although most of the books in the program offer 20% of the book for your reading pleasure, HarperCollins is testing the effect on sales of offering full text versions. For the next month (March 2008) you can read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for free, along with a number of other titles that don’t excite me as much.

If you’ve never read American Gods, this is a fantastic opportunity. It’s a wonderful book, and the Browse Inside application is pretty slick. For iPhone users, there is also a version of Browse Inside specially formatted for your phone.

Go. Read. Enjoy.

I know, I know, I’m a bit behind on the times, but I finally got around to reading Abarat and Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War by Clive Barker.

Abarat is extremely vivid, but not particularly cohesive. It’s a good read, but it reads like Clive Barker had a bunch of disparate ideas that were really cool and then had to find a plot to somehow connect them all. Although most of the characters have fascinating descriptions, they by and large don’t have much depth.

Still, well worth reading if you like fantasy, and particularly if you’re in the mood for some vividly imagined environments and creatures.

I’ve expressed my appreciation for Nightwatch already. Daywatch (its sequel) was pretty good, but a little inconsistent. Fortunately, Twilightwatch, the third in the series, is excellent. Not as good as Nightwatch, but it’s still well worth reading Daywatch to get to Twilightwatch.

I particularly love how Sergei Lukyanenko keeps redefining good vs. evil. It’s a great series.

The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick is possibly the best adult fantasy that I’ve read in the recent past. I highly recommend it. The setting is an intriguing mixture of technology and fantasy, and although the book has some minor failings it is still well worth buying. Literary fantasy done right.

Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko (trans. Andrew Bromfield) is excellent. Buy it. Read it. Love it. I should have picked this book up months ago when I first noticed it, but I was leery because I keep getting burned by good-looking fantasy and urban fantasy that turns out to be total crap.

Bastard publishers have been dressing up some really cheap whores of books in diamond dresses. But Nightwatch is a classy Russian lady.

(By the way, I’m going to start using Amazon.com affiliate links for products; I hate the thought of ads on Beckism.com — it’s never had them — but hosting doesn’t pay for itself.)

Two of my favorite authors have released books within the last three days (within the last two hours for one of them):

Robin McKinley just released Dragonhaven, and Terry Pratchett just released Making Money. I haven’t read either one yet, but both are in the mail. Hot dang!

Also, I just discovered that Robin McKinley has a blog on LiveJournal. And I thought life couldn’t get any weirder.

In other news, Okkervil River’s new album The Stage Names is amazingly good, as is Stars’ new album In Our Bedroom After the War (both links lead to the iTunes store, but both albums are also available from eMusic; the bonus track on The Stage Names from eMusic is a great song, too).

I’m surprised how much great stuff has been coming out recently by authors and artists that I love. I’m behind on the times.

Lost Dog by Bill Cameron is a very good book. I don’t read much crime fiction, but I hang around a forum where the author has been known to post and when other forum-ites said they really liked I picked up a copy.

It lay around on my bedroom floor for a while, until last night before I went to bed I decided to read a chapter before sleep.

Needless to say, I’m completely sleep deprived today because I was up until 4:00 in the morning reading it. Character-driven, action packed, and with a wonderfully twisted villain, Lost Dog is an amazingly fun read. I highly recommend it. My only quibble was that there weren’t any elves.

I really missed elves.