Nose Down, Eyes Up: A Novel, Markoe. Yes. I love Merrill Markoe. I’ve been a fan of her work since the mid 80s, when I figured out how much of what I found funny on a then-favorite show was her responsibility. That said, I did not love this book as much as I wanted to. The characteristic I can most easily identify as jarring is that the first-person narrator is a guy. I can’t say for sure whether the fault is in me or the writing: maybe if I had been reading it without having my expectations dialed to “Markoe,” I would have completely believed that a guy who was doing the things the narrator was doing was also thinking the things the narrator was thinking. I fear, though, that if I hadn’t had my expectations so dialed, I would have simply put the book down.

Children of the Streets, Ellison. Yes. After reading a bunch of early and less-known Zelazny, it has been interesting to read this early and somewhat less known Ellison. In both cases, the writer’s strong voice preceded the truly great writing. This is clearly early Ellison, both of a different time, and from a less-practiced writer: the seams are laid out for inspection, the prose ultraviolet. Not to say that Ellison’s prose has moved very far down the spectrum over the years, but it has definitely modulated a bit.
As an example of what I’m chalking up to inexperience, the narrator in the opening story (“No Way Out”) is distractingly omniscient. There’s no need to wonder what’s going on in a character’s head; no sooner has a character appeared in the story than the narrator lets us know thoughts, fears, hopes, and motivations.
Still, withal, compelling story-telling.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, Shell. Non-fiction. As interested as I would like to have been in the history and effects of America’s quest for cheap, I was unable to finish this book. Shell is a correspondent for The Atlantic, and maybe her skills are better suited for shorter pieces. This work was riddled with editing problems on every level, from typos (some of which could have been thinkos) to badly structured paragraphs to an overall lack of narrative cohesion. The book could very likely have been dramatically improved through the services of friend-of-the-Collective Plot to Punctuation.

The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works, Waxman. Non-fiction. If I were to suggest a sub-subtitle for this book, it would be “It’s As Bad As You Think.” Waxman presents what appears to be a little-varnished (though frequently self-congratulatory) look at how legislation happens, and the old saw about law and sausage definitely applies—though I have slightly more hope that the sausage-making could be reformed.
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Manna from Heaven, Zelazny. Yes. I don’t know how I missed this publication. I didn’t let Zelazny’s death prevent me from examining the appropriate section of the book store on every visit, but I nevertheless was unaware of this 2003 collection. Given the ongoing publication of The Collected Zelazny, it is of somewhat less interest, though the introduction (by Steven Brust) is unlikely to show up there, and it’s not clear whether the seldom-seen prologue to Trumps of Doom will, either.
The collection itself is not terrific, leading me to suspect that maybe everything Zelazny was willing to see republished was collected before his death. Still, it’s Zelazny (though the Amber short stories show some signs of less than full engagement), and even substandard Zelazny is worth reading, at least once.

The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery, Joven. No. To be completely fair, I didn’t give this book much of a chance. In my defense, after skipping an introduction and enduring a prologue, I had rather hoped Joven might, well, get on with the story. I was disappointed and not in possession of sufficient patience to hang on.
Mechanics: insufficient data
Style: Two pages of actual novel bored me out of the book. A random page (well, sentence) in the middle did nothing to persuade me I had judged too hastily.

Power & Light: Volume 2: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, ed. Grubbs, Kovacs, Crimmins. Yes. It continues to be a delight to be able to read things previously uncollected, and sometimes unpublished, though my delight is mitigated by some mechanical issues.
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The Dead Man’s Brother, Zelazny. Yes. The manuscript for Dead Man’s Brother was discovered by Zelazny’s agent, presumably recently, certainly after Zelazny’s 1995 death. I found it interesting to read a work that is clearly Zelazny, but is not predominately sf (though it certainly bears a distinct trace of sf). It’s a bit preachier than RZ usually was, and I’m not sure a crime fiction devotee would be entirely satisfied, but I was.
I found the publisher’s mission statement charmingly nostalgic:

Hard Case Crime brings you the best in hard-boiled crime fiction, from lost pulp classics to new work by today’s most powerful writers, all in handsome and affordable paperback editions. The yellow ribbon represents your assurance of quality.

Update: Many thanks to Tom Jackson (see the comments) for pointing me to an account of the history of The Dead Man’s Brother.

Threshold: Volume 1: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, ed. Grubbs, Kovacs, Crimmins. Yes.
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Downtown Owl, Klosterman. Yes. In discussing this book with my librarian, I learned that a more recent reading of 1984, and paying more attention, would have let me notice some things that Klosterman was doing. Noticing them might even not have annoyed me.
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