Recently I started making my way through Irish author Eoin “It’s Pronounced ‘Owen’!” Colfer’s popular Artemis Fowl series. I’ll admit, I’m rather behind on the times—the original Artemis Fowl was published in 2001, and the following four books (plus one due out this July) about the boy genius have emerged at roughly the rate of one per year.

I believe it was in early 2004 that a fellow student of fine literature mentioned the Fowl series to me and heartily recommended them—knowing that I had just finished the latest Harry Potter installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and would have to wait another year for the next segment of the Hogwarts adventure. The magical elements and witty writing style of Colfer’s work were sure to appeal. I have mentioned before that young adult fiction is not just meant for teenagers—anyone with a short attention span or simply a love of a well-spun tale is sure to enjoy.

My friend failed to mention the enormous difference between J.K. Rowling’s work and Colfer’s. Artemis Fowl is a criminal mastermind. That is, he enjoys cheating other people out of money for profit. And he only seems to do it in order to increase his family’s fortune, which is already extensive. He gets away with it (and keeps the reader’s interest) because he has a high IQ, and some excellent (and entertaining) backup in the form of his martial arts aficionado and gun-wielding ‘man-mountain’ servant known as Butler.

The reason one reads on is because Artemis is so darned clever, first of all, and secondly, there are moments when his humanity shines through (though he tries so hard to be evil) and the reader begins to like him despite his shabby, selfish actions.

Like the Harry Potter series, Artemis Fowl is supported by supplementary short stories and even graphic novels; the first Artemis Fowl movie is rumored to be in the works. The books are quick adventures and easy reading; I made it through The Arctic Incident before the break and neglected to check out the third book in the series, The Eternity Code, but it is on my library shortlist.

Last week I wrote optimistically about my spring break reading—thinking I’d use a little LEPrecon fairy magic to stop time and get through a stack of magazines. Unsurprisingly, not much progress was made. Did you get through your vacation reading?

—Lara Killian

“I know there is prejudice against celebrity authors but if you read my stories you’ll know they’re not ghost written—only I could be that bonkers!”

Geri Halliwell makes it hard not to love her. Even despite the “It’s Raining Men” cover and the yoga videos. She’s got a determination about her, and a killer sense of humor. Her post-Spice life, too, is filled with achievements to rival the biggest celebrity goodwill givers. She been a representative for the United Nations Population Fund, touring family planning clinics women’s groups in the Philippines. She produced a documentary series on her UN work, which saw her visiting with kids from different social backgrounds around the world. In 2006, she toured Zambia raising awareness about maternal death rates and HIV. And that’s just the beginning. Geri, it would appear, lives her Girl Power motto.

Now Geri’s bringing that motto to Britain’s over-sevens. She’s written a series of books, all featuring a feisty nine-year-old called Ugenia Lavender. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes Geri as saying that while Ugenia’s adventures are based on Geri’s own childhood, the character herself is actually inspired by the varied personalities that made up the Spice Girls.

“[P]art of the motivation for creating this character was that I wanted to find a new medium for Girl Power. Ugenia is like all the Spice Girls rolled into one.”

So, let’s see—a girly, sassy, sporty chick who can balance her energy and her innocence? I like her already.

Her first adventure is out in the UK on May 2, with illustrations by Rian Hughes.

—Nikki Tranter

Robb Kendrick has a great passion for the tintype photographic process. In Still, he uses this process to document the lifestyle of authentic, modern American cowboys—those people who actually ride horses as part of their job, working the big cattle ranches. He has spent decades driving across the United States with his darkroom in tow and the result of his travels is a gorgeous, rich feast of portraiture. These are real working persons who span a wider range of nationalities, ethnicities, genders, languages, and ages than we were ever taught by Hollywood’s depiction of the Wild West. One of the cowboys even serves the photographer a meal of lamb, an unthinkable deviation in beef country! The subtle variation in costume is also well-recorded.

My beef, though, involves Kendrick’s careful posing of his subjects so as to never reveal any trace of the modern era. There is a conspicuous lack of cell phones, pick up trucks, bulldozers, Ipods and other ubiquitous tools of 21st century life. We see the occasional pair of glasses, a bottle, rifle, or contacts. The feeling is hard to shake that much like a stage set, a measure of reality and authenticity were sacrificed for aesthetic reasons. A typical city-dwelling observer glancing through Still may be hard pressed to differentiate between Kendrick’s reverential documentation of reality and a bunch of modern guys trying out for a themed Ralph Lauren commercial. Sometimes, Still‘s photographs appear more sophisticated versions of those souvenir, sepia-toned novelty photos people bring back from vacations at the dude ranch.

The number of working cowboys is unknown, but one of the subjects in the book notes they are “kind of a dying breed”. Thus, there is a tragic feel to some of the shots, that this part of history may soon be lost entirely. Despite Kendrick’s stated efforts to capture unadorned ordinariness, the pictures do have an undeniably romantic and individualistic aura. The subjects are also almost exotic in their descriptions of the joy of being outside, being cold and hungry, or perhaps smelling something nice, as opposed to being on a couch, near a television or computer, or in an air-conditioned shopping mall.

Some of the pictures appear worn and damaged. The artist obviously knows his stuff and this begs the question of whether or not deliberate scratches and scrapes were applied to artificially distress the photographs. Perhaps the marks and imperfections occurred naturally, though, because there is no reason for Kendrick to make them look older than they really are, or to suggest to the viewer that he is a less competent technician than he is. Not to be churlish, but Kendrick’s skill in presenting the subjects in an intriguing light makes me wish that the tintype camera process were able to allow him to use his considerable technical and artistic skills to document these characters doing what they really do, in an even more realistic environment: working, not standing still.

The cowboys themselves, as revealed in their clothing, the looks in their eyes, and the descriptive essays scattered throughout the book, seem genuinely interesting people. Still makes me wonder what their modern lives are really like. 

—D.M. Edwards

… because it’s just about the greatest PR headline I’ve ever seen.

The skinny? UK-based true crime author Jimmy Lee Shreeve is writing a poker-related blog, which can be accessed via his website. Shreeve is the author of four books detailing some of the gruesomest rituals in modern history, including child sacrifice and cannibalism. His newest book is Cannibals, out in hardcover this month from John Blake Publishing. According to Shreeve’s press release, his poker blog “covers his personal experiences ... and highlights the often wild individuals who have been associated with the game since its beginnings on the Mississippi riverboats in the early 19th century”.

Enticing as that sounds, I don’t think even the most creative of press releases could rightly describe the joys of Shreeve’s blog. It is truly a journey into weirdness: eccentric, funny, and ridiculously compelling. If you need some poker tips, Jimmy’s got some. But the fun here is learning about Jimmy’s dad, who taught Jimmy to play poker as a kid. Jimmy’s dad learned the ropes from “U.S. airmen and members of the Mafia during stints in Italy and North Africa in World War II”. Right? Jimmy writes, too, about his first high stakes games, about comparing method acting to poker playing, and comments on the techniques of Phil Hellmuth.

Here’s just a sample from Shreeve’s latest entry, titled “Too many aces can land you in a hole”:

Although most of us would agree that aces in the hole are a good thing to have, too many of them—metaphorically-speaking, at least—can literally land you in a hole. One time, when I was playing poker regularly in Bristol, in the west of England, I ran into what was as near to a Wild West shoot out as you’re ever going to get in the U.K. (short of getting involved in armed robbery and gangsterism).

It involved me, Frank Coburn and Sam Johnson. Both were singer/guitar players, who I used to back up with lead guitar in the pubs and clubs in the region. This was during the mid-1980s.

We’d been playing poker with some rasta guys in St. Pauls, which is the Bristol equivalent of the London district of Brixton. As usual, we’d been playing in the Gaol, the historic cellar owned by Frank. The rastas became disgruntled, saying that we’d had too many “aces in the hole” for it to be a fair game. We weren’t cheating (being honourable, none of us would). Luck had simply been on our side. The game ended, and the rastas left, muttering vengeance.

We thought nothing of it. But the following evening we were on our way for a drink at the Beaufort pub in the arty Montpelier area of Bristol. I was wearing my long coat and Western hat (which I still wear), and was completely unaware that the rastas were waiting for us up ahead, standing like gunfighters in the shadows.and wielding knives.

Head on over to see how it ends…

—Nikki Tranter

Pictures ‘n’ Words: This one is about comic books. Do a search on Amazon for recent releases by the novelist Jodi Picoult and you’ll find her new novel Change of Heart is a hardcover bestseller, her last book Nineteen Minutes a paperback bestseller, and Wonder Woman: Love & Murder doing decently in the graphic-novel category. Picoult, an author of emotionally charged character studies, is the last person one might expect to be a comics fan, and yet there she is among a current crop of mainstream authors taking a detour into the world of funnybooks. Bestselling legal-thriller author Brad Meltzer writes Justice League of America for DC, African-American cult novelist Eric Jerome Dickey and crime novelist Charlie Huston write for Marvel. Filmmakers Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, and Reginald Hudlin ... actors Seth Green and Rosario Dawson ... all people who have better things to do, are coming out as uncloseted comics fans.

I don’t say this in some kind of attempt to legitimize comic books—with rare exceptions, they’re still the same disposable mental cotton-candy they always were—but rather to suggest that even bad superhero comics won’t necessarily turn kids into maladjusted, basement-dwelling mouth-breathers or worse, columnists for hippie socialist alternative newspapers. It’s actually possible to read comics and still make something of oneself.

This was not, however, the prevailing opinion in the 1950s. In the years between the fall of Hitler and the rise of Elvis, America was briefly gripped by a national hysteria over the effects of comic books on the hearts and minds of the country’s youth. David Hajdu, author of the excellent book about Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Positively 4th Street (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2001), essays this period of nationwide madness in The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008).

In the first half of the ’50s, comics were a major industry, with some 800 titles cramming the racks at drugstores and soda shoppes at its zenith. From a comics reader’s perspective it was a Golden Age, with journeyman artists producing some of the best and most influential work in the medium’s history. From anyone else’s perspective, however, the comics were a cavalcade of depravity, tasteless, gory, and catering to the worst parts of the adolescent psyche.

Enter psychologist Fredric Wertham, author of a shoddy but sensationalistic book on the link between comics and juvenile delinquency, and Senator Estes Kefauver, eager to grease his presidential aspirations with televised crusading against society’s ills, and suddenly funnybooks were as much a menace to our children as the godless Commies. Public burnings of comics became a daily occurrence, publishers circled the wagons to create a self-censoring body, and the Golden Age of Comics came to a crashing end, along with the careers of literally hundreds of writers and artists as comics companies folded or were driven out of business.

Even if one bears no love of comic books, Hajdu’s book, drawn from countless interviews and painstaking research, is worth reading for its fascinating glimpse of a peculiar period in our nation’s cultural and political history. We have an obligation to take notice whenever creative expression, even in forms as lowbrow as Tales from the Crypt, comes under fire from people who presume to save us from it. The Ten-Cent Plague is a well-crafted and poignant wake-up call.

Due Recognition: At the same time that David Hajdu reminds us of the villains of comic-book history, comics writer and historian Mark Evanier gives long-overdue props to one of the medium’s true heroes, artist Jack Kirby, in Kirby: King of Comics (Harry N. Abrams, 2008). From the 1940s, when he and partner Joe Simon created Captain America, until his death in 1994, Kirby was the preeminent comics artist of the 20th century.

Evanier, one of Kirby’s assistants during his most fertile period in the ’60s, traces the life and career of the man widely known as “The King of Comics” from his humble beginnings as Jacob Kurtzberg, a tailor’s son from a Brooklyn slum who realized a talent for drawing and spent the rest of his life producing and peddling his art to keep his family fed. Throughout the ’40s and ’50s, Kirby worked in every genre known to comicdom until coming to work as the house artist for Atlas Comics, where he was paired with Stan Lee, who had once been his office boy but was now the editor. Atlas became Marvel Comics, and the Lee-Kirby team created the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the X-Men and dozens of other heroes that went on to make the company millions.

None of those millions made their way to Kirby, however. As good an artist as he was, he was never a businessman. The more flamboyant Lee got the credit for the work while Kirby continued to eke out a barely adequate living through a per-page rate of pay, and was even forced by Marvel’s lawyers to disavow any claim to creative input. The situation improved a bit when Kirby moved on to Marvel’s competition and created his Fourth World saga for DC, a sweeping and bizarre epic of cosmic gods, interstellar hippies, and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen—at least Kirby’s name was used to sell the comics, even if Kirby himself continued to receive sweatshop pay for his vision.

But while Jack Kirby may not have gotten the respect he deserved from his employers, his fans knew better, and Evanier’s book is one for the fans. It’s a coffee-table-sized book, and while the $40 price tag may seem a bit steep, the book’s format is ideal for showcasing the master’s work, including original pencils, a gatefolded poster, and a lot of work never before seen by the reading public. Best of all is Evanier’s prose, which is affectionate but never obsequious, and gives us a vivid picture of Kirby’s passions and prescience, his fierce determination to keep working even as his health and eyesight began to fail him, and his sheer boundless decency. It comes highly recommended to anyone interested in watching the art of comics evolving in the hands of one of its greatest practitioners.

New in Novels: If anyone reading this is a true geek, then I can describe S. M. Peters’ debut novel Whitechapel Gods (Penguin USA, 2008) as evoking an exciting and horrific mix of Alan Moore and early Clive Barker with shades of Grant Morrison and Terry Gilliam and you’ll immediately bum a ride from Mom to go buy it. For those less receptive to name-checking, Peters’ novel is an impressive entry in the recent subgenre of science fiction known as steampunk. Though no less techno-fetishistic than its older cousin cyberpunk, this sort of story concerns itself with imaginative technology of the Victorian era, all gears and levers and shiny brass rivets. Peters’ novel, however, takes all of that and plunges it deep into hell.

At the close of this novel’s 19th century, London’s notorious Whitechapel slum (in our world, home of Jack the Ripper) has been enclosed in an impassive wall and taken over by a pair of all-powerful entities: Mama Engine, whose colossal furnace belches ash into the sky, and Grandfather Clock, a gear-driven Big Brother. A small contingent of humans have formed a resistance movement, but how can mere flesh-and-blood hope to rise against an enemy that lives in every inch of the city and the very air itself?

For a first novel, Peters’ book is beyond impressive. From the first page we’re drawn into incessant nightmare, a psychotic fever-dream of horror and violation that makes us grasp at the faintest glimmers of hope as eagerly as any of the protagonists do. There are definitely shudder-inducing and often nauseating elements here, but as in any good horror tale, you’ll gladly take them as part of the ride.

This article first appeared here at Flagpole.

—John G. Nettles

Judge in Potter case isn’t a fan
Judge Robert Patterson, heading up the case involving J.K. Rowling’s attempt to stop publication of a Harry Potter lexicon guide, thinks Rowling writes gibberish.

The Age reports he was overheard telling a witness he found the books “complex”.

I’m adoring this story more and more. I’m absolutely on Ms. Rowling’s side—these are her creations and if she doesn’t want Steven Vander Ark to put out what she considers a great plundering of her work, that’s up to her. Still, this whole case is just becoming a bit of a comedy.

In this article, Vander Ark is reported as sobbing as he spoke of being a “pariah within the Harry Potter community”, and almost no news source can resist comparing Vander Ark to Potter himself. The comparison, truth be told, is rather unsettling.

And then there’s the melodrama of the whole thing. The Wall Street Journal recently carried this quote from Rowling: “Should my fans be flooded with a surfeit of substandard books—so-called lexicons—I’m not sure I’d have the will or heart to continue.”

I wonder why she’s up in arms about this one, when there are already heaps of these books around—field guides, idiot guides, trivia books, etc. I’d say the flood is already beyond her control.

Dan Barker likes choice
Barker discusses the amount of books published per year, and how he decides which ones to read:

Of course, nothing says we have to read every book, and we should remember that most of those are aimed at specific niche markets like business industries, come from little-known or even disreputable publishers or are the result of self-publishing. Their value may be limited or nil, although there are some great self-published books out there.

Apparently, Dan can speed read, and is going to discuss the pros and cons of that process in a future column. I will be looking out for that. I’m wondering—is speed-reading like watching movies in fast-forward? You get the gist, but not the meat? I guess we’ll find out soon.

Joanne Harris like anchovy toast and Korean horror films
Harris, author of Chocolat, reveals other wacky things in the Independent‘s mini-interview.

Karen Joy Fowler likes Jimmy Smits and Veronica Mars
Fowler tells Reuters she enjoyed the film version of The Jane Austen Book Club, and based her latest book, Wit’s End, on her experience traversing Veronica Mars fansites and blogs.

I was struck with how unhappy the fans were with the writers. The fans were outraged when the writers who made the characters up didn’t seem to have the same sense of who those characters were. I thought it was fascinating how much ownership the fans felt over the characters, and their need to protect them from the people who’d actually made them up.

Wit’s End features a novelist concerned about the levels to which her fans are directing her stories.

The book’s plot reminds me of the time Aaron Sorkin got so pissy at a website that criticized elements of his The West Wing that he wrote the site into the show (episode “The US Poet Laureate"), and bashed it.

Interestingly, the same website was embraced by Veronica Mars creators who apparently used it to find out exactly what the fans wanted from the show. I don’t know what I think of that. It’s interesting on the one hand, but who wants to put the fate of these beloved characters into the hands of some forum posters? Imagine if movie producers asked the same thing on posters at the IMDb? It’s the stuff of nightmares.

At least, I guess, the blogs stop fans from kidnapping and hobbling authors to get what they want.

Bill Bryson hates litter
Bryson is heading up the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which wants tougher penalties for litterbugs. The BBC quotes Bryson:

I think what’s happened here is that people are leading different lifestyles. People are eating on the run now and increasingly dispensing of the packaging out of the car windows but we are clearing it up as if it was 25 years ago … Litter is becoming the default condition of the countryside. It is time that we—all of us—did something about it. The landscape is too lovely to trash.

James Patterson likes giving new authors a chance to make money, but not necessarily to be creative
Patterson tells the Palm Beach Daily News all about his new book, Sunday at Tiffany’s, co-written with children’s author Gabrielle Charbonnet. We’ve discussed before at Re:Print how Patterson “co-writes”—he comes up with an outline, describing exactly what must go into each and every chapter. Then he passes that outline along to a new or aspiring writer and has them flesh it all out.

In this article, the author reveals how the new writer will do one draft, hand it back, and Patterson will complete the final drafts before submitting to the publisher.

So, what does that other writer do exactly?

On criticism of this method, the Daily News report continues:

“We’re hung up in this country about individualism,” said Patterson, who compares his collaborative process for writing novels to the traditionally accepted manner in which film and television writers develop their products. “Why can’t a book be created this way?” Of course, with his celebrated status and reputation for enormous sales, it’s also a means for Patterson to give a lesser-known or aspiring writer an opportunity to break into the best-seller league — and earn what he describes as a “nice” amount of money.

He wants me to hate him, right?

—Nikki Tranter