A little known fact on this site, is that I like to read books without pictures. Comic book author Warren Ellis has written a book without pictures. It’s called Crooked Little Vein. Here is an excerpt taken from the Amazon.com Chapter One PDF:

“I have a stressful job. This is how I like to relax. I like to go to a small hotel and take heroin. Just lay on the bed and feel my bowels slowly unclench.”

He leaned back and sighed with relish, as if he were sinking into a warm bath.

“I like to lay on the bed, naked, with my guts oozing onto the sheets, nodding out and watching the Fashion Channel. All those skeletal smacked-out girls. The faces of angels and the bodies of Ethiopians. I find that sexy, son. It’s not like I have an easy job, and I feel I should be cut some slack in this area. Heroin angels, strutting around for me. With Enya playing. They play a lot of Enya on the Fashion Channel. Great regiments of heroin angels lined up in endless long dressing rooms elegantly banging smack between their delicate toes to the soundtrack of British TV shows about Celtic people. You should try it. It’s a poetic thing, you know?”

His eyes closed, a beatific grin spreading across his weathered face like an old wound opening.

“In that moment, son, I am as beautiful as they, and you are to ignore the rabbit droppings steaming on my bed: interior chocolates placed on the pillow by the solicitous maids of my bowel. Sometimes I get up and dance, scattering the gifts of my intestines across the Edwardian carpet, ignoring the shrieking of the housekeepers and the priests they call in. `Phone the White House,’ I sing to them. `I control the nuclear bombs.’ All of which is to say: I am a functioning heroin addict and also the most powerful man in the world, and you should pay attention now.”

Go and buy a copy now. If you need reassurance here is the quote off the back of the book from Kinky Friedman:

Warren Ellis writes like a bipolar Raymond Chandler. Crooked Little Vein injects at least two welcome elements into the tired, clogged mystery field: a little death and a little life. It’s also funny enough to make you shit standing.

So I’m slowly getting back into reading. I devoured Crooked Little Vein and wasn’t sure what to read next. Months flew by and it wasn’t until after x-mas I picked my next book. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. One that I had heard about. One that seemed up my alley more than a little. Here is a small excerpt:

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed sub-category. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachno-fiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.

I had a hard time getting into the book though. It has a weird flow that made it hard for me to read. Not sure how to describe it. It could just be me. The ending was also a let down. Just felt like it all ended so quickly. The Metaverse often made me think of Second Life (I have only dabbled). Although I’ve never seen anyone get cut to bits in SL so the Metaverse has one up on them there. All in all I enjoyed the book. I’m reading Gibson’s Neuromancer now, to continue the cyberpunk theme.