Finished two books. Traitor’s Blade, Sebastien de Castell. Heroic protagonists, dancing rapiers, a murdered king, and magic — suitable ingredients for a worthwhile high fantasy story. The book has more dramatic/high stakes scenes than I expected, as well as more disturbing content. Outside of a few minor plot gripes everything worked for me. Rating: 4 stars Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote. The best descriptive writing I’ve read all year. The setting in this book… Wow. It’s as rich and transfixing as any character could ever hope to be. I love every character. I love the messages and themes. If only I’d felt the ending was as nigh perfect as the rest of the book… Rating: 4.5 stars Currently reading: Summer of Night, Dan Simmons
I just discovered the new Robert McKee book Action is out. I had no idea he was working on another one. It complements his previous books Story, Character, and Dialogue. McKee always takes you on the deep dive into his subjects. EDIT—It turns out to be specifically about the action genre. I assumed it was about Scene, aka Showing aka Action. Hey, this is actually pretty excellent, considering I'm just setting out to write some action chapters. Perfect timing in fact.
Well, I'm not qualified to judge her scholarship, but I wrote better term papers in high school 50 years ago. The title is Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students Needs., a generic 'give me my PhD and let me get out of here' subject if I ever heard one. My favorite part is the second sentence in the introduction: "The needs of the student population are often undeserved [sic], resulting in a student drop-out rate of almost one third." Seems to me I would make sure that my thesis for a doctoral degree didn't contain misspellings that actually reversed the meaning of the sentence.
Ryka Aoki, Light from Uncommon Stars. Aliens running a donut shop, you say? Only one place this could be headed:
Finished two books. (1) Summer of Night, Dan Simmons. While it has its merits, this book is a lengthy step down in quality when compared against the two other works I’ve read from Simmons: The Terror, & Drood. Having read Stephen King’s IT, which has a similar premise and cast of characters, Simmons’ story landed for me like a less inspired version of King’s. It was good enough to hold my interest, but it never felt special. Rating: 3 stars (2) Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey. A nonfiction account of roughly half a year Abbey spent in Utah working as a park ranger for Arches National Park. Lots of vivid and stirring description of the American Southwest. A little adventure. A copious amount of societal judgement. Questions are raised pertaining to environmental conservation, and a few answers are offered. I enjoyed it, and more importantly, I got something out of it. Rating: 4 stars “This would be good country,” a tourist says to me, “if only you had some water.” He’s from Cleveland, Ohio. “If we had water here,” I reply, “this country would not be what it is. It would be like Ohio, wet and humid and hydrological, all covered with cabbage farms and golf courses. Instead of this lovely barren desert we would have only another blooming garden state, like New Jersey. You see what I mean?” “If you had more water more people could live here.” “Yes sir. And where then would people go when they wanted to see something besides people?” ~ Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey
Desert Solitare is a classic, and one of the first gifts my husband ever gave to me. I should reread it. Did you ever read The Monkey Wrench Gang? Currently rereading The Clock Strikes Twelve by Patricia Wentworth and reading for the first time The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich.
I recently bought, and am halfway through reading, Wild Tales by Graham Nash. It is a fascinating read about the life of Graham Nash from his initial musical beginnings with The Hollies and on to CSN and CSN&Y and everything else that happened along the journey. I wholly recommend the book if you're interested in reading memoires.
I'm researching the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 right now so my pile of books and papers would take a while to enumerate. Reading documentation re: Flora McDonald is bringing me to the conclusion that the lady didn't particularly want to get directly involved with rescuing Bonnie Prince Charlie, but was rather forced into it and paid a heavy price for doing the deed. I'm not sure a couple hundred years of people sentimentally singing The Skye Boat Song has made up for the problems it caused her.
For Halloween, I reread a couple horror stories with a local connection: the H.P. Lovecraft/Zealia Bishop collaborations “The Mound” and “The Curse of Yig”. “The Curse of Yig” is interesting on a few counts. First, the flashback narration mostly follows Audrey Davis. That means this story has the only female point-of-view character in Lovecraft’s entire body of work. She might actually be his most prominent female character period; Lavinia Whateley is pretty out of focus in “The Dunwich Horror” compared to her son Wilbur, and Asenath Waite in “The Thing on the Doorstep” Spoiler isn’t a woman for most of the story I know this has led some scholars to suspect that Bishop might have been more involved in actually writing the story than she was in their other collaborations, and that she wrote Audrey, but all the prose seemed very much textbook Lovecraft. Second, it’s also a departure from his usual setting: Oklahoma during the Land Run and the 1920s instead of New England. Native Americans feature much more heavily than usual in his work, which…doesn’t turn out quite as bad as you might expect. Definitely not winning any points for good representation, but nowhere near as vile as stuff like “Medusa’s Coil”. In fact, things go wrong mostly because warnings from the native characters are ignored. Finally, the story is legitimately sinister, whereas a lot of his other work is merely weird or faintly unsettling. “The Mound” is much weaker, probably the weakest of his big worldbuilding novellas. I’d put this down to how most of the story is told through a manuscript several centuries old, so the horror is far less immediate and filtered through two narrators. K’n-yan is a cool concept, though.
I finished a short story called Varg in Love by Alexander McCall Smith. It’s a Valentine’s Day mystery basically about a man who runs a detective agency gets his first Valentine’s Day card and decides to put his detective skills into solving who sent it. A little out of season but humorous writing.
Started reading John Grisham the boys from biloxi not impressed. The first three chapters were virtually all telling and one of the characters just put a silencer on a revolver I have a strong feeling I’m not going to finish it… five chapters in I don’t feel any connection to any of the MCs and no real desire to know what happens next. it reads like an unedited first draft ETA: I abandoned it seven chapters in, it now resides in the RNLI's second hand book stall waiting for some other mug
Finished three books. (1) Priest of Gallows, Peter McLean. The third installment of the grimdark fantasy tetralogy War for the Rose Throne. This wasn’t a bad read, but it was somewhat disappointing. The reason being is that the main character, former gang boss Tomas Piety, plays more or less a subservient role throughout most of the story. He’s no longer calling the shots; he’s more of a despondent, albeit high-ranking, spectator. And that struck me as an obviously wrong choice. I was still more than satisfied with the core ingredients of the series: setting, characters, themes, and tone. But less than satisfied with the main character’s arc. Rating: 3 stars (2) No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin. A 600+ page history book covering FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, with emphasis on what they were up to during the war. Rating: 3.5 stars (3) The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy. I have substantial complaints with this novel, but even more substantial praise. For the sake of brevity, I won’t breakdown what I felt its pros and cons are. But broadly speaking, I found Tom’s childhood and overall family dynamic to be the most impressive parts — downright excellent — and judged the chapters with Lowenstein and/or her son to be far less impressive. Rating: 4 stars
'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. I now have a better idea of how he's able to condense characterization and setting description so well. It's set in a small town, so people instantly characterize each other with just a few words. "Oh, he's a welder's son." To a small-town person, especially a couple of decades ago (or maybe it remains unchanged) this tells you everything about somebody. Everybody knows everybody, if you mentioin a street everybody knows each house and the families that live in them, they know who owns each business and their families, where each one went to school etc. And they assume nobody can change, that they'll always be what they started as, and what their parents were. Also, for setting, he uses vivid unexpected details, just one sometimes, where I would use several sentences or a paragraph. "A small slatey creek". That one word hits you between the eyes and tells you more than a few sentences of more ordinary description would. Because it's a surprise it hits harder. Well, I doubt anybody understands what I'm talking about. Not sure I can explain it better, but it's enough for me. I have enough of a grasp on it now that I can try it myself. Also, he just freely breaks every rule. He seems to be throwing everything he can think of in, and the kitchen sink too. Overwriting the hell out of it, and then doing it for a few more pages. He's just good enough he can make it work. There's something indefinable roiling and seething behind the words. Maybe it's his enthusiasm? I don't know. Whatever it is it imbues everything with that magic his best stories have.
I finished reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I heard so much about this book, a bestseller, and heard it praised nonstop also by favorite YT book reviewers (now doubting their skills). I would give it a 3.5-stars, because its writing is not that great, but it has a good entertainment value--I would say that it is a good Christmas gift that gives hope to the reader about the future. I can see where all the hype comes from, it is like a sort of Sixteen Candles (not the topic, but the category of endearing entertainment with no commitments people like, the kind that makes you feel good at the end of the day) meets A Christmas Carol (timeless archetypal story). However, while the writing is easy-to-read, it is just average (good for publication). There are quite a few lessons I learned from its writing, and overall enjoyed the book. Spoiler: summary of story and twists revealed First of all, a warning about this rather messy review and thought collection about the book! I just don't have the time to edit it. In brief, the story is about Nora who decides to commit suicide and finds herself in the midnight library, a place where each book represents a potential life she could live in a multiverse conception of the universe. As long as she is in between life and death, she can access the library. She has no will to live, but by experiencing various potential lives, she finds it back, and realizes that what you need in life is hope to make your life better--it is not about how your life is but how you look at it that changes everything. By living different lives, she starts undoing her regrets by pursuing the interests she abandoned (swimming, philosophy, becoming a glaceologist, etc.) or living potential relationships that went south, and eventually came around erasing many of the regrets, hence changing her outlook on life. The writing is filled with telling, too much telling, but it is ok because there isn't much character development. In fact, the plot is primarily centered on the reader experiencing the so much desired "what if"s of other lives. Nora is forced to change by reliving regrets, but the writing doesn't really delve into the transformation. Still it is pleasurable to read, because you want to see what happens next. The dialogue is often annoying, because after the fifth time she jumps into a new life she still has the same conversations as when she did the first time (the TV show Quantum Leap gives some ideas on how to do that better). The initial regrets deal mostly with obvious goals she hasn't pursued (rightly chosen), but of course she is not just a swimmer, she is a top-rated Olympic champion, etc. Every scenario is chosen well, because it is what all of us would most likely choose, and eventually teaches her the lesson that life as a top performer doesn't necessarily make you happy. There is also some Butterfly Effect in that in this life her mother is dead, in another her father is dead, in yet another her brother is dead, etc., almost as if her decisions drive certain outcomes, although she is reminded that people make their choices and that she cannot control those. She also survives a bear attack that make her see life differently, giving the story a dose of adventure. The story approaches quantum physics to describe how she makes sense of her situation, although it is a story-based science--that is scientific principles that are explored insofar as to create a narrative to put the mind at ease, but in itself filled with scientific inaccuracies. This is also very accurate and so believable. The point is, this story satisfies certain human desires and choices and reasonings, and that is why it is successful in my opinion. There are also twists that make the story well constructed, like at some point she meets another fellow life-switcher, from whom she learns his take on life (a different perspective she hasn't thought about). The library and its responses (swirling books or crashing at the end) are potentially good metaphorical representations created by the unconscious, like in a dream--I would love to experience this library in a dream. At the beginning of the story she is so troubled, her conflict is so great, and everything in her life progressively goes down the drain that she comes to the conclusion that the most drastic choice is the only solution. There is a librarian that guides her journey. The initial conflict, along all the other elements/steps, make this story a great example of how to structure a plot, although here I am making a poor illustration of it. The writing is simple and makes you realize just how little description you need to give and still manage to create a strong impression on the reader. However, some of the descriptions feel a bit random, like when she first she jumps into a new life and notices the environment around her, some objects give her clues on her new life, but other objects are soon forgotten in the story. Overall, the story centers on the hook of the "what if"s of other lives we cannot live, a desire that is so primary, that when mixed with the image of the library of life has created a success. I think the idea is such a good (storytelling) idea, but its execution could have been better. Still I can learn so much from it about story structure and elements of storytelling, that made the story worth reading.
Thought I'd give The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown a try for a change of pace. So far, so meh. Maybe it will pick up.
I've only tried one Dan Brown novel and sadly it didn't improve as I went along. I don't think I finished it.
"The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan (★★★ 1/2) "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (★★★) "Humboldt's Gift" by Saul Bellow (★★★) "Get Shorty" by Elmore Leonard (★★★★ 1/2) "Logan's Run" by William F. Nolan (★) "The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales" by Attila Veres (★★★★) -------------------------------------------- "The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan (★★★ 1/2) This was a decent read. It's a sequel to "The Goon Squad" (Pulitzer Prize, 2011) and is written in the same style. It's a composite novel, so you'll find several short stories telling a bigger tale (that tale was somewhat nebulous, IMO). I did like the Goon Squad better, but this was okay. (Junot Diaz is still the king of this form. I wish he'd write another book.) "The Candy House" represents a gift that comes at great cost, in this case it's the recording of your every thought and memory. You can trade this to see the thoughts of everyone else and then search through a kind of internet-of-past-events. I would never submit to this process. I can't believe the characters do. The truly horrifying aspects of the idea aren't explored at all. I also thought a bit of the writing was delicate and safe (in the PC sense of the word). I guess I wanted more danger and less 21st-century egalitarianism. There's one story in there though that is genius, and that's the story where a super-autistic guy makes plans to ask out this girl he likes. It was taken to absurd extremes and seemed more like the thoughts of Star Trek's Lt. Commander Data, but it was so funny and wasn't afraid to shatter feelings. I loved how it ended. There was another chapter where a woman thinks entirely in 2nd-person aphorisms, which I also found pretty entertaining. (A device in her head is playing advice from past secret spies so that she can complete her mission.) It was strange, but took some clever twists with that format. -------------------------------------------- "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (★★★) I won't say much about this because it's a standard. I got lost with all the characters at the beginning. It took me until page 100 to feel much for anyone. It was okay, but I prefer "The Grapes of Wrath" as a book giving a better picture of the era. I didn't really understand why Gatsby was so crazy about Daisy. She was just good looking? I'm not sure what his infatuation was all about. You assume that they're perfect for each other but you can't say why. -------------------------------------------- "Humboldt's Gift" by Saul Bellow (★★★) The most difficult Pulitzer I've ever read. Dense beyond belief. Saul Bellow made me feel pretty stupid. Every now and then I could understand his train of thought, but I usually had to look up the subject he was rambling on about. It's like reading a philosophical treatise written by a Jeopardy! egghead. It's basically a story about the MC and this irascible poet friend of his (Humboldt) who has died. Picture fat paragraphs that fill pages talking about metaphysics, literature, history, and esoterica. When the supporting cast shows up and the story goes into dialog, you're able to come down from it all and find an actual story. It probably could have been told in 40 pages, but you get 550. Somewhere past the halfway point I did start to get interested though, so reaching the ending was okay. You'll have to commit to some hard reading to get to that point. Here's the best section, which I liked a lot. The MC is visiting this old guy in a run-down old folk's home: So little stood between him and death, you see. On the bald harsh crimson of the threadbare carpet, a pale patch of weak December warmth said, “Don’t cry, old boy.” Inaudible storms of light, ninety-three million miles away, used a threadbare Axminster, a scrap of human manufacture, to deliver a message through the soiled window of a nursing home. My own heart became emotional. I wished to convey something important. We have to go through the bitter gates of death, I wanted to say to him, and give back these loaned minerals that comprise us, but I want to tell you, brother Waldemar, that I deeply suspect things do not end there. The thought of the life we are now leading may pain us as greatly later on as the thought of death pains us now. And that's not even that tricky of a passage, relatively speaking. Maybe that's why I like it. If the story wouldn't have picked up a bit when it did, I would probably only give this two stars, but it improved as it went along. I don't think the story was the point though. It was more about the exploration of life and death. -------------------------------------------- "Get Shorty" by Elmore Leonard (★★★★ 1/2) A shylock (think: loan shark enforcer) goes in pursuit of a guy who has scammed his way into a fortune and still needs to pay up. The shylock follows him to Hollywood where he gets involved in the movie business. Pretty fun story with typically perfect Elmore Leonard dialog. It borders on metafiction with the MC selling the story he's involved in to Hollywood producers. I saw the ending coming a mile away. I'm a little surprised it was so telegraphed. That's its only weakness. It's funny though, the story ends with the MC talking about his script again and struggling with the ending. It's like Mr. Leonard is admitting that the "Get Shorty" ending was off. -------------------------------------------- "Logan's Run" by William F. Nolan (★) In the future, a sandman (professional killer) must escape to Sanctuary. He is pursued by other sandmen because no one is allowed to avoid their death at the age of 21. Absurd. The movie is so much better. The book wasn't well written and was filled with situations that didn't make sense. If you live in a society of drugged out hedonists then why would anyone (the female sidekick) be ashamed to be seen naked? The people of the future trade sex as if it were a handshake, so why are there situations where having to have sex with someone is a shocking development. It would be as if you or me applied for a job and when the time comes to shake the employer's hand, we're suddenly aghast and need rescuing. I didn't buy it. The story didn't commit to the premise. It jumped about scene to scene seemingly at random and very little was detailed in a way that had impact. Not impressed, sorry. I do like the movie though. -------------------------------------------- "The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales" by Attila Veres (★★★★) A horror short story collection from Hungary. It was translated perfectly. I liked the stories that were more weird than horrific. Don't get me wrong, the horrific ones went for broke and succeeded. There's one in particular that really pushes the limits with a trip into a fantasy hellscape and gets a lot of mentions from reviewers. It's absolutely bloodthirsty, like a Bosch painting come to life. I'm not bothered by such things, but it really was over the top. I preferred the stories that were simply strange. They were dark in parts, but it was the strangeness of them I found so appealing. I loved where the author took them. Picture these plots: When breaking up a fight between two dogs, a woman is pulled into the fight herself. To get away, she is forced to bite one of the dogs on the ear. She runs home, delighted, to tell her boyfriend of her clever escape. All seems well until the boyfriend starts to hear of a rash of dog bitings in the local park. Someone is hunting the local pets. A fellow is picked up from the streets of Budapest and taken to a special wine tasting. The rules of the tasting are that a random person must always accompany the chosen others, and he's the lucky find. Each wine (called "complexes") carries a flavor more intense than the last. The flavors are chosen to make the taster relive a certain event as if they were there, and the events are not for the faint of heart. No one ever gets to the final tasting. A band that is only remembered in hearsay advertises itself with blank posters. No name, no date. They show up unpredictably and hearing them changes the listener forever. A researcher tries to find evidence of their songs. A devil tries to guide his charge with carefully crafted nightmares. The man he is shaping is destined to destroy the world and rule over its ashes, but the guy just can't be bothered to fulfill his potential. I'm very happy with the whole book. Expertly done!
No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin It's about FDR and Eleanor 1940 thru WWII. I strongly recommend her histories. This is the third one of hers I have read. The other two were Lincoln, and Teddy. She has away of making the Era come to life.
Finished three books. (1) The City and the Stars, Arthur C. Clarke. An impressive premise with even more impressive themes. But the story (unfortunately) is strictly aimed at the logical parts of ones brain. Characters are anything but fully realized, the prose never charms or punches, and I judged the author’s efforts at inspiring immersion to be subpar. All of the novel’s magic is stored in its ideas. I would hesitantly recommend The City and Stars to someone for similar reasons why I might recommend they eat raw kale. I believe both (kale & novel) to be beneficial, but I also understand that many will struggle with their lack of flavor. Rating: 3 stars (2) Hondo, Louis L’Amour. This is probably the closest story I’ve read all year to what could be considered a male-targeted romance novel. For me, that’s not a slight against it. When viewed separately I really like the book’s components: characters, adventure, romance, and resolution. But I felt the conflict was all too often rushed, and the climax was surprisingly underwhelming. And a story like this needs a ripping climax. Rating: 3.5 stars ~~~ He couldn’t think. His mind was scarred from fear, bludgeoned by a new self-hate. He cried and the red dust of the road stuck to his face. His sweat melted crusts of Ottenburger’s blood on the back of his hands, making rivulets of pink run down his fingers. He threw his rifle into the weeds next to the road and walked several steps, then went mechanically back and retrieved it. Neither act required decision. The compound was in front of him. They were still throwing bodies onto trucks and hauling them away. The mortar crew was already firing new missions into the Arizona. Last night it had been an unreachable haven, but now it was a wire-encircled prison. I’m in hell, Goodrich sobbed over and over. I’m in hell I’m in hell I’m in hell. ~ Fields of Fire (3) Fields of Fire, James Webb. This book started off a little rocky for me, but once it found its footing it delivered everything I hoped it would. Emotionally complex. Morally complex. Definitely immersive and offers surprising and memorable character arcs. Undoubtedly one of the finest works of historical fiction depicting the Vietnam War. Rating: 4.5 stars
