The Queue
Fangland is a fraud, the book is not the "re-imagining" of Dracula it purports to be. Instead, the hack uses the basic framework of Bram Stoker's immortal novel—an innocent is lured to Transylvania under false pretenses by a fiend who eventually travels to the dupe's home metropolis—to tell a ponderous & pretentious ghost story. Worst of all, the hack commits to sin of recycling one & only one character name from Dracula: the protagonist's surname is Harker. Use all, or at least most, of the character names from Dracula, or use none of them. To use only one betrays a base attempt to cash in on a better author's efforts. (See Kim Newman's Anno Dracula to see how a writer pays homage to his better.) The book, a bloated, self-important mess from beginning to end, is a crying shame. The title is rubbish, the "vampire" doesn't have fangs & isn't a vampire at all.

Recently
William F. Buckley, Jr., Saving the Queen
Kim Newman, Dracula Cha Cha Cha
John Marks, Fangland

Currently
Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence

Presently
John le Carré, Call for the Dead
David Ignatius, Body of Lies
Len Deighton, City of Gold

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Paul McCartney, "Live and Let Die" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Extraordinary circumstances are required for me to endorse the work of Sir Paul McCartney, & today was Bond-heavy enough to qualify. Early this morning I traded in a book I didn't want for a good-as-brand-new copy of Live and Let Die, the second 007 novel, & after a television advertisement for Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol prompted a mocking discussion of the Mission: Impossible film franchise, I was able to give my pop the mixed news about the next Bond picture, Skyfall: Daniel Craig returns as Bond, but the film is to be directed by the dreadful Sam Mendes. I live in hope.

"What does it matter to ya?
When you got a job to do,
You got to do well,
You got to give the other fella hell!"

Sonntag, 13 November
Queen, "Somebody to Love" from Greatest Hits I (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "Can anybody find me somebody to love?" I have my doubts.