The Bookshelf

Aug122005

Literary Immortality

Picture yourself curled up in your favorite chair on a cool autumn afternoon, sipping a cup of your favorite hot beverage, lost in the pages of a good novel… and all of a sudden a character steps into the scene who shares your name and maybe even looks like you. Sound like fun?

Well, then, check this out: a dozen or so notable authors including Michael Chabon, Amy Tan, Peter Straub, Lemony Snickett, John Grisham, Stephen King, and Neil Gaiman (from whose blog I got this little tidbit of news) are auctioning off the opportunity for your name to appear in one of their upcoming books. It’s all for charity, with the proceeds going to the First Amendment Project, an advocacy group that defends the freedom of expression. Complete details about this charity auction are available here.

Personally, I’m thinking I’d like to be immortalized by Stephen King. If you know his work, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that he’s offering the most elaborate prize for your auction money; whereas the other authors promise simply to use your name somewhere, King intends to have his way with your fictional doppelganger:

“…Buyer should be aware that CELL is a violent piece of work, which comes complete with zombies set in motion by bad cell phone signals that destroy the human brain. Like cheap whiskey, it’s very nasty and extremely satisfying. Character can be male or female, but a buyer who wants to die must in this case be female. In any case, I’ll require physical description of auction winner, including any nickname (can be made up, I don’t give a rip).”

A buyer who wants to die at the hands of cell-phone-induced zombies… I love it.

The auctions are being held in three separate blocks, with King’s prize up for grabs during the September 8-18 block. You know, my birthday happens to fall within that span of time. If someone really wanted to impress me…

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Jul242005

I Made Love to a Screaming Brain!

Pop quiz: who’s the coolest actor working in the film industry today? I’m thinking of someone who has appeared in both blockbusters and art-house movies, a journeyman actor who both headlines and does small character roles, a man who commands a legion of die-hard fans, and who is the very definition of “suave.”

Am I referring to Sean Connery? Nah, I said someone who’s still working today, and all the signs indicate that Sir Sean has retired. Harrison Ford? Hasn’t worked in several years, apparently content to spend his days playing Rescue Ranger in his helicopter. Tom Cruise? Please… the word “suave” hardly applies to someone who publicly abuses a sofa in the name of mid-life-crisis/publicity-stunt love. No, the person I have in mind is someone you could actually imagine yourself hanging out with, a regular guy who just happens to have landed a job a whole lot of people think they want (but would probably hate if they got it), and who has managed, somehow, against all odds, to forge a decades-long career in an industry that is finished with most people within a couple of years.

I’m talking about the one and only… Bruce Campbell.

Continue Reading…

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Jun022005

Another Book Meme

There’s a new meme floating around LiveJournal country, about books. I just did a book meme not too long ago, but the questions on this one are a little different, and it’s short enough that neither writer nor reader will lose much time over it. If this is your sort of thing, read on and enjoy. If not, I’ll catch you later…

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May132005

Junger on Adventure

I’m not one to go rock-climbing or bungee-jumping, but I have nevertheless longed, from time to time, for a taste of adventure in my largely unexciting suburban life. I therefore found the following comments on the subject most interesting:

Modern society, of course, has perfected the art of having nothing happen at all. There is nothing particularly wrong with this except that for vast numbers of Americans, as life has become staggeringly easy, it has also become vaguely unfulfilling. Life in modern society is designed to eliminate as many unforseen events as possible, and as inviting as that seems, it leaves us hopelessly underutilized. And that is where the idea of “adventure” comes in. The word comes from the Latin adventura, meaning “what must happen.” An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely within your control. It’s up to fate, in other words. It should be pointed out that people whose lives are inherently dangerous, like coal miners or steelworkers, rarely seek “adventure.” Like most things, danger ceases to be interesting as soon as you have no choice in the matter. For the rest of us, threats to our safety and comfort have been so completely wiped out that we have to go out of our way to create them.

–Sebastian Junger, “Colter’s Way” in the collection Fire

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Apr152005

Book Talk

Oh, no, it’s another meme! No worries, though — this one is pretty short, only five questions about books…

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Mar012005

How Many Banned Books Have You Read?

Uh-oh, it’s another LiveJournal meme. Surf on if you’re not interested in gaining further insight into my questionable tastes and interests…

Still here? Oh, good, then let’s talk about banned books. What follows is a list of the 110 all-time banned books. Exactly what the term “all-time” means is open to interpretation, since the LiveJournaller I appropriated this from wasn’t sure who compiled the list or what criteria were used in choosing items for it. Nevertheless, these are books that at some point have gotten somebody’s ruffles in a bunch. The idea of this meme (presumably) is to demonstrate to all the world how enlightened, literate, countercultural, or just plain contrary you may be by showing how many of these you’ve read.

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Feb212005

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You…

When I was pondering the other day what purposes this blog serves for me, I forgot one very important function: it gives me a place to publicly voice my frustration at the knuckleheaded, market-driven, focus-grouped, pre-packaged mediocrity that festers in the heart of our culture, draining the passion from anything new, leeching the originality out of anything cool, and digesting everything into a soft, flavorless gruel of miserable disappointment.

What, you may be asking, has Bennion’s knickers tied into such a painful little knot this afternoon? Why, it’s nothing more than a glimpse I caught yesterday of a poster for an upcoming movie, a little summertime trifle called Sahara.

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Jan032005

Year’s End

I hate to say it, but I didn’t really accomplish much in 2004. The best description for my career these days is “sporadic,” I didn’t begin the novel I’ve been planning (and procrastinating) forever, and I didn’t do any travelling. I did collaborate with a friend on a screenplay, so that’s something, and another friend who lives in Los Angeles paid me a rare visit, but overall it’s not been a memorable year for me. Still, there are a few statistics I can discuss, superficial though they may be.

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Dec232004

Seasons Readings

I’m not one to get all sentimental about Christmas. I tend to approach it with some degree of indifference, actually. I’m not religious, I don’t need the pressures brought on by this time of the year, and frankly I resent the time-creep that is erasing all sense of passing seasons because the retailers have got to get the decorations on sale before Halloween has even come. I don’t think I’ve reached full-fledged Scrooge levels of anti-Yuletide hostility yet, but Christmas for me simply isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I just don’t buy all the Hallmark-card saccharine.

I was therefore surprised by the depth of my reaction when I recently read a feature article about the World War I “Christmas truce.”

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Jun132004

LiveJournal Book List

Life has gotten pretty busy for me lately and it promises to remain so, at least for the rest of this week. This has left me in the frustrating position of having many things I’d like to write about here at Simple Tricks, but not enough time to actually do the writing. Rest assured, my loyal readers, that there is some actual content in the offing… it just may take a while to get here. In the meantime, I thought I’d throw you a bone by offering up the following examination of my personal reading habits.

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