Home > The cool-stuff-we-read-(and recommend)-in-2012 list
The cool-stuff-we-read-(and recommend)-in-2012 list
Time to get your lovely 2013 head out of the whiskey clouds and into The Cowboy and Vampire world with our Best-of-2012 list.
This list is a holistic, no holds barred, all-encompassing effort that captures the components, the bits and pieces, the creative juice that fuels the gothic western comedic neo-anarchic big-bang duct-tape wearing love story-for-the-ages aesthetic that is The Cowboy and Vampire.
For you diehard fans, the list gives you something to chew on until Book Three comes out in 2013. For all you others (and hopefully there aren’t many left), wet your whistle first with Book One (the original) The Cowboy and the Vampire: A Darkly Romantic Mystery and Book Two — Blood and Whiskey. Hey, sexy cowboy. Let’s do it vampnam style. Here’s what you should be reading to stay in an undead buckaroo frame of mind (in no particular order).
American Vampire, a graphic novel by Scott Snyder and Steven King (Vertigo). For just about forever, vampires have given us a “safe” metaphor to talk about sex. Sex? Seriously? Sex ain’t evil; sex is fun. Capitalism is evil. Or at least it’s soulless and forever hungry. American Vampire follows a new species of vampires and the arc of American history, a history shaped by the quest for money, power and blood. Some of the mayhem takes place in the American West. Alas, cowboys don’t rule, but that’s okay. That’s our territory.
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (Ecco). While this book takes place in the past so we can’t be 100% sure of its accuracy about cowboys, we see signs in these characters suggesting they could be ancestors of both Tucker and Dad, locked in a similar familial hero’s journey. These two crazy-like-foxes brothers are funny, broke, ornery and struggling to balance good with evil. Evil usually wins. We’re committed to displacing Louis L’Amour (as much as we love him) with cowboy realism. This book contributes to that goal. And once again, Oregon plays a role. What else is needed?
The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice (Random House). Okay, we have to admit, we have not read this book yet, although we are avid fans of Madame Rice. It’s on the bed stand, but are confident including it on our list because pretty much anything she writes is bound to be stellar. But we must also admit to being a tad perplexed by her recent obsession with Honey Boo this year. Eh? Meh. Sure, a nice ripe neck, but we think the philosophical consequences of the undead burrowing inside a dying Wyoming town offer up much better Lestat-style storytelling than Honey Boo.
Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander (Simon & Schuster). A real-world description of a near death experience that transformed a scientific skeptic into one of us. It’s entertaining to read about his shift away from the altar of scientific materialism, but too bad this author-neuroscientist didn’t expend more intellectual effort in considering if his “heaven” might be something else, something much less resembling all those Sunday school lessons we slept through. Something like, well, The Meta. Guess heaven sells books these days. Still, eminently readable.
Design in Nature by Adrian Bejan and J. Peder Zane (Doubleday). How did vampires get so damn tough? According to this mind-bender, there is a force in nature that shapes the design of everything that flows — and almost everything flows. From the roads we build to the capillaries that transport our blood, the constructal law maximizes flow against resistance. Evolution flows. Blood flows. Evil flows. Vampires are clearly a product of this mysterious force. Read this, but keep the light on when you contemplate the super predators that MUST be peeking in your window and imagining the blood flowing in your neck.
The Anarchist’s Cookbook by William Powell (Ozark). An oldie but a goodie. We don’t actively advocate violence against authority (well, not often we don’t) but this age-old book gives writers a great source for improvised weapons in the hands of paranoid characters and plenty of philosophical rants to aid in the fight against social lethargy. Go on, pretend for a second you are not an insecure rat in a capitalistic lab. Need your fictional hero (in our case, Lenny) to understand how to build a bomb? Surprise, this subversive book is available from Amazon and Nook.
The Pscyhopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson (Riverhead). Forget The Men Who Stare at Goats (we should write a book about the vampires who stare at alpacas), Ronson’s latest book is a careening nonfiction journey that stretches from mental institutions to hotel bars and winds through the various dark alleys of psychopathy. Half the people you know are probably crazy. One thing that would be truly crazy is to think that we are at the top of the food chain.
Stumptown by Greg Roucka and Matthew Southworth (Oni Press). Wanna know the heart and soul of our cool city? Grab yourself a dark microbrew, kick the television in on the hipster-darling Portlandia (yawn, petulant, cynical irony is so 2012), and read this dark, gritty graphic novel instead. You will not be disappointed. Dex rocks.
Fifty Shades of Gray by E.L. James (Random House). Sex, love, passion — it reminded us (a little) of the love between Lizzie and Tucker, although the cruelty and control were more like Elita, of course. We heart sexy writing in all its forms, especially when it originates as fan fiction for vampires and includes real hotels (like the Heathman) located in our hometown of Portland. Hey, in 2013, we’ll be curious to read a fan fiction version of The Cowboy and the Vampire. There could be prizes involved. Big prizes.
Near Death by Richard Hale (Thirty-Three AM Publishing). A standout in the burgeoning genre we call “con-fi” or consciousness fiction, Near Death explores how information technology and advanced imaging may be harnessed to define the near death experience, and how the military-industrial complex could use this knowledge for nefarious purposes. Need we say more?
Hex and the Single Witch by Roxanne Rhoads (Bewitching Books). 350,000 new books were published in 2012, of which we guess half might be indie paranormal romance featuring vampires, werewolves, mermaids and the like. How to stand out above the crowd? Connect with book bloggers! Roxanne runs a great tour company and is an author herself. What we like most about her book is how Roxanne drops paranormal elements into the gritty realism of perennially depressed Flint, Michigan – vehicle capital of the world – which was originally catapulted to fame by Michael Moore’s film Roger & Me. Hmm. Was Roger really a leader in Flint’s underground vampire world?
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Knopf) by John Vaillant. What’s it feel like to be at the top of the food chain and to feel zero remorse for killing? We take our tips on this from the wild, not from criminals. This book follows a team of Soviet ex-special forces as they track a Siberian tiger who, in turn, is tracking and killing people (don’t worry, they are poachers selling tiger penises to impotent Chinese men so they kind of deserve their death-by-tiger end) in the Russian taiga. It is a first hand look at the fearful symmetry of a super predator and helped shape our perspective on contemporary vampires.
So that’s a just a sampling of what we fed our brains in 2012 as we finished up Blood and Whiskey and started on Book Three. It’s a mess up in there (our brains), but it seems to help with the creative process. What did you slam into your grey matter in 2012 and what will you be reading in 2013? Connect with us on Goodreads to see more of the 2012 list and beyond.