Just read it

Since the week after Christmas is devoted to lots of year-end lists, this week at BOOKGASM marked our final five book-reviewing days of the year. As usual, the offerings ran the genre gamut (click the links to read the whole thing):

• JUST KICK IT: TALES OF AN UNDERDOG, OVER-AGE, OUT-OF-PLACE, SEMI-PRO FOOTBALL PLAYER by Mark St. Amant – "And if you or anyone you know has a love for football, you must buy this book, because it is a tremendous surprise in the overcrowded and heavily clichéd field of sports tomes. Also the author of COMMITTED: CONFESSIONS OF A FANTASY FOOTBALL JUNKIE, St. Amant has a wonderfully witty, self-depreciating style and is never afraid to let the joke be about him. And it often is. Because he’s a little white guy from a posh neighborhood who signs up with the Boston Panthers, an inner-city team that has a league-wide reputation for being dirty and nasty. And he’s never played football in his life."

• BLOOD LINES: RICHARD MATHESON'S DRACULA, I AM LEGEND, AND OTHER VAMPIRE STORIES edited by Mark Dawidziak –  "If you've already read his classic I AM LEGEND novel, you still need this book. And even if you've already read the three short stories here ... yep, you still need this book. Why? Because this is the like the director's cut DVD of Matheson's bloodsucker oeuvre. And it's the extra features that put previous barebones releases to shame. Editor Mark Dawidziak has done a superb job in assembling this one.."

• THE OXFORD MURDERS by Guillermo Martínez –  "OXFORD has a lot going for it beyond its clever premise. Through Sonia Soto's simple translation, Martínez paints a rich portrait of academic life in the UK. Its touch of newly adult angst amidst such a dangerous backdrop reminded me of Jon Fasman's excellent THE GEOGRAPHER'S LIBRARY, minus the twin narratives and ever-wide scope. But the intricate trail of clues is there, along with the narrator falling for wounded women, and a climax that at first seems anticlimactic, but soon reveals more layers."

Elsewhere on the reviewing front this week: a zombie horror novel in the FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT franchise, Will Eisner's posthumous THE PLOT, Gene Wolfe's SOLDIER OF SIDON, the comic-cowboy MARVEL WESTERNS anthology, Avram Davidson's ADVENTURES IN UNHISTORY, the first ESSENTIAL MAN-THING collection, three old sex novels and three old movie novelizations. Plus Peter Rabe, Lawrence Block and a little something called NAUGHTY SPANKING STORIES FROM A TO Z: VOLUME 2. We wish you a Merry Christmas, but only if you check us out first.