Parlabane is back in this book, now engaged to Sarah. Jenny the police detective is in it, too. I think there are 4 or 5 books with those characters.
I hate unhappy endings that are contrived to appeal to those who don’t like happy endings. This happens quite a lot in movies, where it seems the makers don’t want the critics to (=) them for the ending.
=Dang, I cannot remember that word!
“Pan”?
You make a good point.
Yeah, pan, that’s it! Thanks.
Sometimes getting old is fun(ny), sometimes it’s it’s just frustrating. 
Finished Nose down, eyes up. The tale of Gil and his dog Jimmy. Gil finds Jimmy giving a lecture on how to manipulate humans (hence the title) and decides to record it so that he can cash in.
The back cover said “Hilarious … a must-read for dog lovers” and the second page contained this passage:
“Usually Jimmy sat beside me while I worked, in a position that reminded me of the Sphinx: upright on his stomach with his front feed and back feet placed for and aft. He had an inscrutable way of staring that always made me feel like he found me fascinating. Though he was as still as a piece of statuary, every so often he would spring to his feet, run over, and lick my face like I was a delicious frozen dessert. At moments like these, when he would appear happier to see me than I have been to see anyone, even though he’d been sitting there for hours on end and had seen me and seen me and seen me and seen me some more, I would be reminded how much I liked his company.”
This quote so reminded me of my dog, I was hooked.
Alas, the good start was wasted. Actually, the book starts well and ends nicely. Everything in between was not so enjoyable. Although the premise is about the dog, really the book is about Gil - an asshole - and his relationship with annoying and one-dimensional women. His current girl-friend is a flighty new-age hippy, his ex-wife is a pampered, self-centered, high-maintenance bitch and his mother is odd and overbearing.
In the last few pages Gil seems to be redeemed, but by that time I found him so loathsome I didn’t really care.
The main character in the book I just finished (So Cold the River by Michael Koryta) isn’t exactly “loathsome”, but he doesn’t have many positive qualities. I wouldn’t like him as a person but he was the perfect character to move the story along – ambitious and self-centered.
I’d recommend the book to supernatural fans. If you like Joe Hill, you’d like this. He’s as good as King with characterization, but he doesn’t have any of King’s faults. Koryta’s pacing is perfect. No padding. The characters continued to behave like real people. The ending was exciting. Nothing felt contrived. What happened, happened because of what the characters did, and it felt natural. The mystery was intriguing and even a bit believable.
I just finished an audiobook, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by Jacqueline Kelly. The reader (Natalie Ross) was really good, but I thought the story was just so-so. Anyway, it kept my fingers off the radio tuner for a couple of weeks on the way to work.
Today I started the audio version of Danse Macabre, by Stephen King. I’ve read it many times before, but this one has a new introduction. I don’t know if it’s the annoying reader, or maybe I’ve just read too many King essays about imagination and horror, but so far it’s just making me irritable. I don’t want to hear one more word about that fucking van accident!
Hey, we’ve read a lot in June. This month’s thread is nearly twice as long as the ones for April and May.
I just finished the next of Kage Baker’s Books, Mendoza in Hollywood (actually she’s in southern California in 1862, but the other operatives keep pointing out stuff like the future sites of the Hollywood sign and Harrison Ford’s house). In format it was very similar to Garden of Iden, with melancholy Mendoza narrating, which still managed to be hilarious in places. Most of the book was very good, but it kind of fell off the edge of a cliff at the end. I find that I don’t care much about the plot or the machinations of the mysterious Company; it’s the day-to-day maneuvers of the immortal operatives that amuse me.
I’m reading The Red and The Black by Stendhal and I’m really enjoying it. I’ve found myself trying not to laugh when reading it on the tram.
I’m still plugging away at Michael Slade’s Cutthroat at the beach. It’s not one of their best but I’ve gotten some good ideas about civil culture vs. the limbic system which are tying into my other two more serious June books.
Those have been Michael H. Stone, M.D.'s The Anatomy of Evil, an attempt to classify various levels of human dastardliness, and Crime and Human Nature: The Definitive Study of the Causes of Crime by James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein.
Dammit, I’ve heard about this book for years. Time to buy the damn thing.