Lock & Mori by Heather Petty

I was waiting for the next season of Sherlock to come out, and I just wanted a little something to tide me over. Petty has written an intriguing alternate version of the Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty duo. A fast paced mystery set in modern times. I particularly enjoyed the development of the characters as they work through the mystery and learn more about their skills at observation and where they lack knowledge to accurately deduce the outcome.

I look forward to the release of the second in this series (December 6, 2016) to see how she continues to develop these characters and create her own "Sherlock" world.

Killing and Dying: Stories by Adrian Tomine

Killing & Dying is a graphic novel nthology of amazingly written stories about people who live ordinary lives but end up in weird, sad or funny situations. Trust me, you'll fly through these stories and curse the story-gods that there weren't more!

There are six stories, "Hortisculputre" which is the somewhat depressing tale of a guy who becomes obsessed with a form of landscape artwork that only he truly appreciates. It's the story of a guy trying to make something of his life and nearly losing everything he has in the process.

"Amber Sweet" is about a woman who is a dead ringer for an online porn star. How their lives intertwine is touching, funny and strange. 

"Go Owls" is one of the most hard hitting in my opinion. Two people meet after an AA meeting, they seem to get a long and decide to move in together. Their story is tragic as their addictions and shortcomings bubble up to the surface over and over again. 

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

This is a  lever novel unlike many I have seen before and I won't be surprised if it gets on many "must read" lists. I say that because while it mentions many of the popular YA tropes of the past few years, the overall theme is that real life is a much scarier proposition for teens to navigate.

The Beats: A Graphic History

For me, the writers I think of as "Beats" included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and a few others I paid less attention to. Gary Snyder, sort of, since Kerouac did base a character in The Subterraneans on him. But I don't like labels much, and neither do most of the writers. Critics, on the other hand, love to categorize artists and writers into this slot or that literary movement.

This graphic narrative (NOT novel) views the beat writers alongside those of the "San Francisco Poetry Renaissance." There was certainly some overlap, some mutual influence. It's a very readable look at a bunch of mid- to late- twentieth century American writers. Beyond the four I mentioned, there are also profiles of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Olson, Michael McClure, Philip Lamantia, Kenneth Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Philip Whalen, and several more good writers. The profiles tell a little about their lives and their writings.

Politically & culturally, Patchen was a rebel. Though variously identified as a communist, anarchist, Trotskyist, beat, surrealist, or dadaist, he rejected all labels... Above all, he hated war. "Any man with a gun aimed at another man is Hitler."

Many of those labels could be applied to a lot of writers. The labels may help us appreciate their work, but I'm reminded of Duke Ellington, who didn't always like the category "jazz." He composed music. Period.

Several artists drew these comix, and several people wrote the profiles, making The Beats: A Graphic History a lot of fun!

If I Was Your Girl

I know out there in the kidlit community the questions "What exactly is a 'boy book?'" and "Do we really need books specifically made *for* boys?" Inherent in the first question is a need for a solid definition, in the second an argument against the idea that boys and girls think and read differently. I'm not going to try to answer these questions, but I do want to present an opportunity to think about what we want from the books boys read, and how do we best achieve that.

Okay, kind of a heavy start for a review, but this is Guys Lit Wire, and I think most of us here are committed to this idea of championing really solid literature in all formats for a broad audience of boy. This time around, perhaps a non-obvious choice on the surface if you judge by the cover, and that's my point. You look at If I Was Your Girl and think "Hmm. Is that really a boy book?" Then you read a little.

Amanda has just been picked up at a bus station by her Dad, who she hasn't seen in six year, needing to get out of the town where her Mom lives and start her life with a clean slate. She arrives in Lambertville, GA with a black eye and the overall desire to just crawl into a ball and hide after a stint in the hospital. She approaches her new school with the usual apprehensions about being the new kid in town, afraid she'll land in the same scrapes but with the hope that something will change, because she has.

You see, back at her old school she was known by her birth name, Andrew.

The Thing With Feathers by Noah Strycker

Or, as the subtitle says, "The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human." This remarkable nonfiction book, reads like a poetic recounting of both biological and anthropological fact, woven as creative nonfiction. It's by Noah Strycker, who holds the World Record for birdwatching's "Big Year" - 6,042 species of birds in 2015, and wrote Among Penguins, about his time in Antarctica.

Strycker is 30 years old, and is a prime example of someone living their (possibly geeky/nerdy) dream life. He happens to really love bird-watching, and learning about animal behavior. As a result, he has traveled extensively around the globe, been on all seven continents, and made a living while writing for Birding Magazine (where he's an associate editor) and publishing surprisingly engaging nonfiction accounts of bird life and behavior. Having read great reviews in the newspaper, I snagged my copy in an airport bookshop while traveling, and was happy to have it as my companion.

The Thing With Feathers is divided into three main sections: "Body", "Mind", and "Spirit", each containing 4-5 chapters. The chapters aren't cumulative, but are stand-alone ideas, although there are obvious overlaps and inter-relationships as the book moves along. The very first chapter is about pigeons - specifically, racing pigeons, which manage to navigate distances really well and can often find their way home even when great lengths are taken to drop them someplace far away (and to confuse them about how they got there). Along the way during that chapter, Strycker relates stories of mammals (dogs and cats) who also found their ways long distances to return to their homes or families.

The Haters by Jesse Andrews

Full disclosure before I review Jesse Andrews’ new novel, The Haters: I am myself a reformed hater, albeit one who suffers from occasional relapses. The hating by the characters in Andrews’ novel is mostly of the musical kind, but I also drank the literary haterade. In my defense, doing so was somewhat required of an English major, at least when I was an undergraduate (which was post-admission of women, pre-availability of the Internet to anyone but hardcore physics/chemistry majors in the basement of the science building whose existence on campus I knew of only as myth).

The former hater in me would begin this review by asserting with a certain weariness that Andrews’ second novel is nowhere near as good as his first, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which I knew and loved WAY before the rest of you did, and certainly WAY before it became a film and (sigh) they published a version with “Now A Major Motion Picture!” on it. Haters know that all artists who achieve any level of fame are inherently corrupted, and all subsequent work can only be hated on.

The Haters is about Wes and Corey, best friends and music geeks, who meet Ash, guitar goddess, at a summer jazz camp none of them particularly like. The trio bond over their mutual love (and hate) for music and the fact that, as high school boys, Wes and Corey are more than a little girl-crazy. Ash is their manic pixie guitar goddess, and she sparks them to embark on an epic and hastily planned road trip through the South trying to find places to let their band perform. (First performance? At an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.)

Andrews, as he showed in his first novel, writes teenage boys well and hilariously. Well, hilariously from my viewpoint.  Me and Earl was a divisive book, and I imagine The Haters will be too. Wes and Corey manspread their extended manpart jokes throughout the novel; if that sounds crass and distasteful to you, The Haters will engender your hatred. If that sounds crass and amusing, this book is for you.

Wes, as our narrator, occasionally pulls back the curtain of humor he uses for protection to show us the loneliness and insecurity behind it.  And Corey, well, I mean, he’s the drummer. All drummers have issues. Spinal Tap knew it. The Muppets knew it. It’s a truth about life, and through their misadventures in relationships and gigging, all three characters in The Haters understand some more important truths about life and manage to grow a little by the end. And, no, that’s not a dick joke, but I guarantee you Wes and Corey would have made it into one.

The End of the Worlds

Practical Applications of Multiverse Theory, by Nick Scott and Noa Gavin, doesn't know exactly what kind of book it wants to be.

Scott Simmons is an awkward high school student who hangs out with a group of social outcasts--specifically several nerds plus an enormous guy named Ted who doesn't speak except to say "Hey, man" occasionally. For the most part Scott tries to just lay low and appear invisible to his classmates, hoping in this way to survive and eventually escape from his school.

Davey Burgess -- a name Scott thinks sounds like "something the movie Juno threw up"--is Scott's arch nemesis and near polar opposite. She's cute, the captain of the cheerleader squad and seeks out as much attention as the school will give her. She is also mean, relentlessly ambitious and has her sights set on becoming homecoming queen. She hates Scott as much as he hates her.

Yet, the two keep running into one another.

It all begins, as Scott describes, with a Dr. Pepper can that is somehow incorrectly filled with Hi-C. Scott manages to spill it on Davey's 80s spirit day t-shirt. This is the first and most innocuous of a number of strange occurrences that lead the two characters to an understanding that the universe as we know it is coming apart at the seams. Initially only Davey and Scott can see what's happening. For example, Scott's friends become lizards, try to eat him and then return to being human. And Davey's biology specimen frog comes to life and pleads with her to not cut it up.

After days of denial the two come to realize something is seriously wrong with the school as they slip in and out of realities populated by lizards, monsters, robots and sexy cannibalistic teenage girls who want nothing more than to mate with Scott before they consume him.