Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg

Simon Pegg's Nerd Do Well is a humorous (of course) memoir of his formative years and the events and artists that influence his work to this day. While it's easy for a memoir written by a professional writer to feel forced, Pegg uses the same wink-and-nod at the audience techniques that he often employs in his TV and movie work to make the readers feel that while they may be experiencing a performance rather than a confession, the performance is to an audience of one.

Pegg clearly knows that he is very lucky to be a grown-up working with the people he idolized as a child, and of course there is a decent amount of "can you believe I'm really here?" sentiment as he recounts working with George Romero or walking on to the set of Star Trek as the new incarnation of Scotty. It's the memoir of a fellow fan as much as it is the story of a successful artist, and this is what makes this book so infectiously joyful. Pegg is clearly satisfied in the extreme over how everything has turned out and wants to both share that joy and show how fate conspired to repeatedly help him find the people he needed in his life.

Before you start to think this is the touchy-feely memoir of the year, I have to mention the story interspersed between memoir chapters. It's sci-fi meets Bond flick and it features one Simon Pegg, international man of sexy, sexy mystery and also of guns and space ships. Assisted by his trusty robot butler sidekick, Pegg wrights wrongs, aims inside jokes at readers and references his own memoir in humorous ways. I found it to be a bid disruptive of the flow of the memoir, but read at the end all in one go it was perfect.  Other highlights of the book include a shot-by-shot breakdown of the opening title of Starsky & Hutch (demonstrating the heterosexual man-love balance the show maintained) and a short and hilarious script written for Yoda, Obi-Wan and others after the death of Annakin and the birth of Darth Vadar. 

Nerd Do Well will be available in July of 2011.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

The Magicians & The Magician King by Lev Grossman


First, since it's a favorite of mine, I want to talk a little bit about The Magicians by Lev Grossman:

Viking Adult, August 2009  ISBN 9780670020553

It's hard not to write a massive post on this book alone (and I should know because I just deleted four  paragraphs) so without giving away too much here is the short synopsis:

Boy loves escapist fantasy, especially books about the world of Fillory (think Narnia). Boy is recruited to join magical academy of learning (think Harry Potter) because, surprise!, magic is real. Boy finds that magic doesn't make a person happier in their own skin and that while magic might be real, you still can't just hop into a cupboard and head off to an imaginary place to have historical-type adventures on horseback. Boy also discovers that when you can use magic to make or take what you need the drive to be a contributing member of society is nil. Then comes the twist (two-thirds of the way into the book proving that Grossman is as patient as he is wise) and a wry story about what really happens when people get a taste of power turns into something of a horror tale for fantasy readers. I want desperately to tell you more (and you'll pick some of it up just in reading any review for the next book) but let me just close by saying READ IT. Well, first brace your inner child and then read it.

And now, onward...

Viking Adult, August 9, 2011 ISBN:  9780670022311

Quentin Coldwater is finally a king of Fillory. Along with two Brakebill's classmates and a childhood friend named Julia, he rules the magical land from a gorgeous throne, hunts and celebrates and generally lives a good life. Having apparently not learned quite enough from the last series of adventures, he allows his boredom with jewel-encrusted monarchical living to drive him into a dangerous quest that ends when he and Julia are abruptly expelled from Fillory and dumped in Quentin's parent's neighborhood.  Interspersed with the story of their down-and-dirty attempts to get back into Fillory through the world of unsanctioned magic is Julia's tragic back story. Julia didn't make it into Brakebill's, but also didn't succumb to masking spells designed to keep her from remembering that a parallel magical world exists.  The knowledge that the world holds real magic that she is not allowed to access drives her almost mad and shapes her into a powerful anti-hero and foil for Quentin's faith in the system (be it Brakebill's, Fillory or the magical world at large) This is one of the book's recurring messages : power corrupts, not overtly  but subtly, like a malignancy. Quentin and his friends are corrupted by the ease of a magically-propelled life. The magical world is corrupted by it's self-absorption and ennui, evidenced by it's rejection of Julia (and later of Quentin). Julia is corrupted before she even gets to her power, in just the act of reaching into the magical world she is driven off-kilter.  

On another level, this is the ultimate horror-scenario for the escapist fantasy reader. Grossman delights in repeatedly yanking the chair out from under the reader (to be fair, it's not egregious and in this grim context it works) who has just comfortably settled in for a read about wish-fulfillment. Fantasy writing generally has a certain rhythm. Part of that rhythm is the happy (or mostly happy) ending. Grossman has created something that will disturb readers on a more fundamental level that gore or megalomaniacal evil could ever achieve.  To paraphrase comments from another horror writer (I can't attribute right now, but will look it up and get back to you): horror isn't the blood and the gore or the spooky noises and a creepy wind. It's taking something utterly familiar and making it unrecognizable. 

Grossman's latest book is a slight let-down in that while the first book felt like a complete story, the second feels more like a bridge book. It seems to both start and end slightly off the ground, hopefully indicating that a third book will be added to the story arc before Grossman turns his attention to something else. But that's the worst thing I can say about this dark, layered, funny, heartbreaking fantasy. Lev Grossman could change the face of the genre if he keeps it up.

Recommended for readers of: Peter Beagle, Neil Gaiman, CS Lewis, JK Rowling.
Not recommended for young readers (under 16)  because of language, content etc.
This book will be released on August 9th, 2011. Please click here to hook up with Indiebound.org and pre-order this book from your local Indie bookstore. (You can also pick up the first book while you're shopping!)