Getting out of the shower is NOT the best time to discover that you’ve forgotten to pack a towel in your gym bag.

Drying off with a washcloth? Not recommended.

The Iron Tower Trilogy: The Dark Tide (1984), Shadows of Doom (1984), The Darkest Day (1984)

The Iron Tower Trilogy tells the tale of the Winter War, Mordru’s final attempt to gain control of Mithgar and bring Gryphon back into the world.

The story is told from the point of view of Tipperton Underbank, whose journals were the basis for the tale. (I love the fact that Dennis McKiernan has “sources” for these stories, and sometimes goes into detail about the scholarship of those sources.) Tip has joined the Thornwalkers, a group whose job is to guard the Bosky from intruders–initially wolves, but it’s quickly learned that Vulgs have invaded the thorn ring and are attacking lone families.

Read More about The Iron Tower Trilogy

The cover of this issue of Details features Tom Cruise looking so perplexed it would seem he’s just pulled his head out of his own ass, where it had been lodged for quite some time.

So several years ago I read the Sandman series of comic books, and absolutely loved them. Erin tried to introduce me to some other series, and for the most part I found the books okay, but I didn’t enjoy them nearly as much as Sandman.

So why do I care? Why am I interested in comics/graphic novels? Well, for one thing that’s a whole lotta books I haven’t read.

I started thinking about this partially because of a post over at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels that was a response to someone trashing women’s reading. Fantasy, romance, and comic books all fall into the category of books that people don’t respect. But after some thought, I don’t understand why.

Speaking only for fantasy–because that’s what I read–it does actually address lots of issues. The same types of issues that were addressed in the past by my favorites, folk tales and folk lore.

The series I’m reading now, Dennis L. McKiernan’s Mithgar series, covers at all kinds of topics, from environmentalism to overpopulation to the nature of free will. Even Piers Anthony, who frustrates me to no end, wrote an entire book looking at the nature of death, which was part of a series looking at death, fate, war, nature, time, evil, and good.

Just because it’s telling a story doesn’t mean it won’t make you think. After all, that is what folktales were supposed to do. Teach you a lesson while entertaining you.

So I’m curious about these books that seem like something I would like. After all, how different are superheroes from the Gods and Goddesses of Greece and Rome? Aren’t they just our modern mythology?

Of course, it may end up being like Science Fiction. I like a handful of titles (Ender’s Game, Becoming Human), but for the most part I just don’t like to read science fiction. It just doesn’t do anything for me. And it may turn out that comics are the same way. But I feel like I should give them a try first.

So, any recommendations?

I loved Sandman, as well as Neil’s comics about Death. I liked the first League of Extrodinary Gentleman, really disliked the second. I thought that Kingdom Come was okay, but felt like I was missing something (which would be, of course, the backstory of all the damned characters, yes?), I liked the first few books of The Books of Magic but was seriously annoyed by the end. (I kept wondering, “Where the hell did that come from? Why doesn’t this make any sense?”)

And that’s it.

This weekend I had to get a new watch. Somehow I’d managed to enough damage to my current watch that it was no longer water resistant, and when I checked the time Saturday morning, found that the inside face had steamed up.

This is far from the first watch I’ve managed to ruin. My last watch somehow managed to get its face knocked off, it only took me three years to ruin a very heavy diver’s watch to the point that despite replacing its innards it would no longer keep time, and in college I managed to melt the face of the Swatch I regularly wore. (Apparently the Swatch guard [remember those?!] was good enough to reduce scratches but did nothing for melting.)

How do I do all this damage? I regularly crash my wrists, hands, and arms into walls and doorways that apparently leap out at them when I’m not paying attention. (I’m also really hard on rings, which is why the only ring I wear is my wedding band–and some days even that makes me nervous, like when I catch it on the kitchen storm door handle.)

I really don’t understand how I can be this clumsy, without having spent far more time in the emergency room.

Results for the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are out!

My personal favorite was:

“The night resembled nothing so much as the nose of a giant Labrador in excellent health: cold, black, and wet.”

Devery Doleman
Brooklyn, NY

(If you don’t know, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is an “international literary parody contest, [that] honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873).)

ADDENDUM the First:
Also: The Lyttle Lytton Contest

The Eye of the Hunter (1992) Dennis L. McKiernan

If I remember correctly, this is the second Dennis McKiernan book I read–and the first novel. (The first book was the short story collection Tales of Mithgar.)

In The Eye of the Hunter, the Lastborn Firstborns Gwilly and Faeril, join with Riatha and Aravan to fulfill the oath to destroy the Baron Stoke, who killed Riatha’s brother, and Gwilly and Faeril’s ancestors.