The original Japanese robot, Tom Waits and more in new releases this week, August 2, 2011

We have reached the absolute lull of the summer as far as new releases are concerned. But while nothing coming out on DVD this week appealed to us, we did manage to track down a few books, games and comics that should provide some nice indoor entertainment while everyone else is off getting sweaty and suntanned. To cool you off, we have a detective mystery taking place in the upper reaches of Canada, Tom Waits talking about the weird shit Tom Waits talks about, a game that takes place in a nice cool cave and more.

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Books

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White Heat, by M.J. McGrath
M.J. McGrath has won a couple fistfuls of awards over the years, but White Heat is her first foray into fiction. We're especially fond of the fact that Amazon tags this in the "Canadian detectives" category, but there probably isn't a more apt description. The book follows the trail of Edie Kiglatuk, a half-Inuit half-outsider, as she searches out the truth of an adventurer killed while on an extreme vacation. It's a culture rarely attached to fiction and a story as classic as time itself, but McGrath manages to keep it fresh and new throughout the novel. Plus, we always like seeing armchair adventurers getting mauled and killed at the beginning of a novel.

Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters, edited by Paul Maher Jr.
Tom Waits is a notoriously difficult interview to land, and even when he does give access, few journalists have ever been capable of cracking the Tom Waits code of near insanity. Tom Waits on Tom Waits hopes to illuminate the intrepid songwriter by collecting together more than 50 interviews from a variety of sources that might, if read in total, actually illuminate Waits ideas of songwriting and composition. Or you'll just learn a ton about weird bugs, burlesque dancers and eating beans out of a can with a bunch of hobos -- who knows?