Read and Appreciated in 2004

By Neddal Ayad

Originals · Listmania! 2004 · January 13, 2005

  • Veniss Underground and City of Saints & Madmen (Tor UK edition), Jeff VanderMeer
    I had the Cosmos edition, the one that just contained the four novellas. I liked it quite a bit, but the expanded edition changes everything. “The Strange Case of X,” a story that did nothing for me in the Cosmos Books edition, becomes the centrepiece of the collection, and the additional material… he hid a story in a squid bibliography, dammit! Never mind that the book as an object is a thing of beauty.
  • Shriek: An Afterword, Jeff VanderMeer
    When this hits, I think jaws will drop. VanderMeer distills all the goodness of City of Saints & Madmen into the novel format. This should win over those that were put off or intimidated by the twists, turns, and footnotes of City of Saints & Madmen. For fans of Ambergris, some questions are answered, although for every answer another question pops up.
  • Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
    I’ve always been a fan of the Bond movies, but never bothered with the books. Then I came across a comment from Richard Morgan, Richard Calder’s piece “The Dead Nancys”, a comment by someone, somewhere (sorry, I’m blanking on who and where) on the interrogation scene in Casino Royale, and a piece from The Guardian. A couple of weeks later I was in a used bookstore and happened upon a copy of Casino Royale for $1.99. I couldn’t pass it up. I’m glad I didn’t. And yes, the interrogation scene—ouch.
  • Endgame, Samuel Beckett
  • A Scanner Darkly, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
  • The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
  • On The Road, Jack Kerouac
    Books I should have read before now.
  • Swords Masters, Fritz Leiber
  • The Drowned World and Crash, J.G. Ballard
    The Drowned World was interesting, but didn’t really grab me. Crash grabs you and won’t let go. It’s amazing how many times Ballard fits the words, “pubis,” “perinaeum,” “rictus,” and “mucosal” into a 220-odd page book. I borrowed the book from the library and found a lone pubic hair between pages 167 and 168. I don’t know if the person was using the pubic hair as a bookmark of sorts or if it as the result of something more sticky. I don’t really want to know, but it did strike me as entirely appropriate.
  • Space War Blues, Richard A. Lupoff
    This was something of a gag gift from a friend who knows that I’m not a big fan of straight up sf. The novel itself… uh, let’s just say I can see why it took ten years to get published. The introductions by Harlan Ellison and Lupoff on why it took ten years to see publication are worth the price of admission.