I finished The Oracle Year, and gave it the rare five-star rating over at Goodreads. Man, that was a great read! It wasn’t a perfect book. When I heard the premise, I thought, wow, that’s going to take a lot of time to set up and probably nothing will happen for the first half of the book. Mr. Soule solves that by starting things right in the middle of the action, and filling in the background a little at a time. I feel like Stephen King could have fleshed this idea out more, to the tune of another 200 pages perhaps, but really I’m only complaining that I’d like the book to have been longer. Not deep, but a fun ride.
Next up, Jackrabbit Smile, the newest in the Hap & Leonard series by Joe R. Lansdale.
Finished* Kitty and the Midnight Hour* by Carrie Vaughn, which was pretty good. It’s about a werewolf who starts a radio call-in show for and about other werewolves, vampires, etc. The calls are the best part of the book.
Started All Systems Red, by Martha Wells, which I’m finding very interesting.
I finally gave up on An Indigenous People’s History of The United States. I kept spotting historical inaccuracies, which tainted the entire work for me. Examples: Custer was promoted to the rank of general after he was killed; Jimmy Carter pardoned William Calley in 1974. The author also had a propensity for repeating herself. While I am sympathetic to the attempted extermination of Native Americans, the shabby treatment of those who survived, and the general whitewashing of American historical accounts, adding one’s own version of the facts of history , however minor, makes the book unreadable for me.
Started “An Irish Country Practice” last night. Latest in a series of being a GP (general practitioner) in Northern Ireland in the 1960s. Kinda like James Herriot for people. Just a nice read.
I finished His American Detective by Summer Devon,another m/m historical romance. Overall it was okay, fairly bland and action less, bless her heart she tried, but the main character was creepily into the secondary main’s personal space almost immediately. Honestly dude, wait for the second meeting before trying to seduce your highly traumatised contact…
Finished All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. I thought it was excellent. Sharp writing, great characterization. I’m glad the sequel will be out soon.
Now I’m reading The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau. Interesting dystopia, and its cover illustration is one of the best I’ve ever seen for a science fiction novel.
Around the end of last week I finished Joe Hill’s short story collection, Strange Weather. Really good stuff. Four stories: a camera that erases memories, a coward who is mistaken for a hero, a skydiver who lands on a cloud that isn’t quite a cloud, and the day it started raining crystalline nails (I found that one particularly disturbing).
I’m currently reading David Baldacci’s The Fallen; it’s the latest book in the Amos Decker “Memory Man” series. I like Baldacci’s writing and these characters, so it’s nice to be revisiting this protagonist and his world. He gets this introduction in Amazon’s summary of the first book in the series:
*Amos Decker’s life changed forever–twice.
The first time was on the gridiron. A big, towering athlete, he was the only person from his hometown of Burlington ever to go pro. But his career ended before it had a chance to begin. On his very first play, a violent helmet-to-helmet collision knocked him off the field for good, and left him with an improbable side effect–he can never forget anything.
The second time was at home nearly two decades later. Now a police detective, Decker returned from a stakeout one evening and entered a nightmare–his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law had been murdered.*
The murder mystery A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh was a quick read, and enjoyable. Marsh is an excellent writer, but she does have a few tendencies that some would consider flaws. The main one is that she tends to deal in what I call timetable plots, meaning that a lot of the action (after the murder, anyway) consists of Inspector Alleyn interviewing all the characters at great length about who was where and when they were there. I have always assumed that a devoted reader could take notes on all this complicated timing and study them to figure out where the discrepancies lie and thus solve the murder, but I never bother. I get most of my enjoyment from the setup and characters early in the story, and then just coast through the detection work to find out who the murderer is on the last page.
Another characteristic of Marsh’s mysteries is that there is almost always a young couple who fall in love during the course of the story, and they can always be counted on to be innocent of any crimes. This is in sharp contrast to Agatha Christie, who was utterly brutal in making murderers out of just about any characters except small children (but I haven’t read all of her books–maybe she does that too!).
Yesterday I also completed my first Nero Wolfe mystery, The Golden Spiders. I had mixed feelings about it. I really didn’t find Wolfe to be very appealing, although I suspect I’m not really supposed to; I assume Archie Goodwin is meant to be the sympathetic character. The problem was that Wolfe wasn’t particularly entertaining in this story. He was just a disagreeable guy who sent people out on lots of errands and then announced the solution to the crimes at the end. Also, I didn’t really care for all the 1940s noir tough-guy attitudes of most of the characters (which is the same thing that put me off of Chandler and Hammett). Still, the book was very well written and I will definitely read a few more in the series to see if they grow on me.
Now I’m reading Hell House by Richard Matheson. It gets compared to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House a lot, but I can already tell that it’s going to be a much less subtle story. That doesn’t mean it can’t be good, though!
Hell House was my father’s all time FAVORITE book. He finally found a copy of it shortly before he died, but my brother swiped it before I could read it.
Damn! It’s totally not your fault, but for some stupid reason I clicked on that spoiler and it was one of the novels I haven’t read yet. But on the bright side, I forget the plots about a week after I finish a book, so I should forget that spoiler pretty soon too.
On another subject, I believe you have read a lot of Nero Wolfe mysteries. Do you have a few recommendations for good ones?
I’m a fan of Richard Matheson and I loved I Am Legend, but I’ve always thought Hell House was his weakest story. When I got to the big reveal at the end, I thought that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever read.
Finished it. Pretty good, but not quite as good as I remember. Some of the jokes are clunkier than they ought to’ve been, and there’s some Seventies-era sexism that I could’ve done without.
My current audiobook is Mortal Stakes (1975) by Robert B. Parker, in which his Boston private eye Spenser investigates whether or not an apparently squeaky-clean Red Sox pitcher is cheating. I like it so far.
It’s been a few years… I liked Some Buried Caesar and it seems like Death of a Doxy was good, or the title was anyway. The older ones are bertter written in my opinion, but they are a product of their times and may not have aged super well.
I just finished Jackrabbit Smile, the latest Hap & Leonard from Lansdale. It was exactly what I expected it to be, these books having become extremely formulaic. But I got a couple chuckles out of it.
Next up, The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. It is just ferociously adorable so far.
A little googling and I found this site: List of Nero Wolfe Masterpieces. It’s got a lot of good information about which books are worth reading, and the OP (it’s a forum) comes up with a top ten list of the books at the end of his somewhat lengthy post. I agree that those ten are a good place to start. (NOTE that all the links lead to a page for quotations from individual books, and that many of them have no quotations added.)
If you like those books and plan to read several more, I would avoid reading A Family Affair (Stout’s last book) until the end.
I see it’s been rereleased, i should grab it around Halloween and give it a read.