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April 2013: Book notices

Richard Russo's Kindle Single Nate in Venice tells the story of Nate's visit to Venice with a group that includes his older brother Julian. In something like 90 pages Russo manages to tell enough of the brothers' backstory to flesh out the relationship fully. And he hints enough at their likely future for us to fill in the blanks. My first thought was that the book ended a bit too abruptly. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe I just wasn't prepared for it because I hadn't realized I was so close to finished: Russo certainly doesn't leave the story unfinished. Definitely recommended.

March 2013: Book notices

John Rector's Kindle Single Lost Things is a story about what happens after a pair of friends are attacked one night on a deserted street. It's an exciting and fast read, though the ending seemed to me too abrupt. But the Single did its job. It introduced me to an author I'd never heard of before, and I've now downloaded a sample of Rector's novel Already Gone to my Kindle.

Pretty much every man, woman, and child in beautiful Pagford and its ugly, socioeconomically depressed appendage known as "The Fields" lives a miserable existence. Children hate parents, spouses hate spousees, everyone is mean or depressed or abusive or abused. J.K. Rowling's first post-Potter book The Casual Vacancy shows us that muggles can be every bit as unpleasant as Death Eaters. I did eventually become somewhat interested in Rowling's characters, and ultimately the story was moving, but it took much longer than I wish it had for me to become invested, and all the while there really wasn't anyone I wanted to root for. (Okay, there were a couple of teens who were more abused than abusive, but I still wouldn't want my daughters hanging around with either of them.)

John Rector's Already Gone is similar in tone to his Kindle Single, mentioned above. Jake Reese is attacked one night by a pair of thugs, seemingly at random, but given his troubled past he suspects he's being targeted. He spends the rest of the book figuring out what's going on, a quest which leads him to incur further debts from an old gangster friend of his father's. A decent book, good for some light reading, if ultimately forgettable.

The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam is the first book in Chris Ewan's series about Charles Howard, the author of a bestselling series of books about a thief who just happens to be a thief himself: I can't tell you how much I love this idea. Needless to say, the book is set in Amsterdam, where Charles runs into problems with both of his careers, though the focus is naturally on the illegal side of his life. The only other character who's likely to show up in subsequent books is his editor, a woman he's never met but whom he tells all to on the phone. Charles also runs into a con man who makes a good character and who I can see possibly showing up again if he doesn't mind traveling: the next book in the series is set in Paris. I was prepared to love the book because of its setup and instead just liked it a lot: enough that I'll be reading more in the series. I'm also eager to read the author's stand-alone thriller Safe House.

February 2013: Book notices

Red Eye's Greg Gutfeld is very smart and very funny, and what he has to say in The Joy of Hate about the abuses of the modern culture of tolerance will make most readers angry--or should. I don't think his humor comes across as well in print as it does on TV. If you're a regular watcher you won't have problems reading the book in his voice, but people new to him may find references to transgendered unicorns and the like rather strange.

The Thief is the bleak story about the bleak life of a skillful Japanese pickpocket. The point of the whole thing seems to be that, at least for some--maybe everybody--life is hopeless because it's impossible to climb out of one's circumstances, particularly if one is the puppet of a cruel god.

Shipwrecked is a very well-written adventure story about a yacht trip that ended badly in 2001. Actually, stepping back from it, the adventure wasn't all that exciting (well, I'm sure it was for the participants, but it's not necessarily exciting enough to warrant a book). But Shubaly's writing makes it worth the read. My only problem was that the whole arc of the story was undone in the very last section of the book--Shubaly, having gone through this ordeal, learned nothing from it, and immediately fell back into his previous, self-destructive ways. I get that that's the truth, but maybe omitting those few sentences from the Single would have made it a stronger piece.

Luther: The Calling is a prequel to the BBC television series Luther, and it tells the story of what happened immediately before the first episode. If you saw the series, you'll know that it begins with Luther in a bit of a crisis. This book fills in the gaps in our knowledge, and it fits seamlessly into the story as we know it. The author, Neil Cross, also writes the series, and he captures the characters on paper very well. Very exciting, fast-paced read. I hope Cross writes more of these.

January 2013: Book notices

Mr. Monk Gets Even (2012) is the 15th book in the Monk series and the last one that Lee Goldberg will be writing. (I see from Amazon that Hy Conrad will be continuing the series.) So, a bittersweet read, as I've enjoyed the series for many years now. This one wasn't quite as funny or even quite as moving as some have been in the past, but it did wrap things up well--wrapped up, at least, as the end of an era rather than of the whole series. I won't give anything away, but Mr. Monk does get even, at least for now: given a universe as unbalanced as ours, things are likely to become odd for him again very soon. And the characters around Monk find themselves in the right places at book's end too. Thanks to Lee Goldberg for many years of good reading.

Every Day is an Atheist Holiday (2012) brings more stories from Penn Jillette, who is an interesting guy. He's smart and opinionated and foul-mouthed and godless (thank god) and also very well-meaning and sentimental. He's been naked in public more than you might expect and is more forthcoming about his sex life than you might wish. Reading his stuff is the literary equivalent of listening to his Penn's Sunday School podcasts, which are recommended.

Nelson Demille's Kindle Single The Book Case (2012) is the first thing I've read by him. It features NYPD Detective John Corey, who is apparently a recurring character, though this of course was lost on me. A good read, and I didn't feel that I was missing anything as someone who was new to the character. I really enjoy the Kindle Single format. Sometimes they just hit the spot, and this one did it's job.

December 2012: Book notices

Frank Welsh, Building the Trireme (1988). I read this one for my current project, but, unusually, I really did read it cover to cover. Welsh was one of the three men who came up with the idea, in the early 1980s, of building a reconstruction of an ancient Athenian trireme. The others were ancient historian John Morrison and John Coates, a naval architect. Coates designed a ship based on Morrison's ideas, and the trireme was built by the Greek navy and launched in 1987. A series of trials at sea followed during which the capabilities of the vessel were tested. Welsh tells the background story of all this. A more technical summary of the goings on is published by Morrison, Coates, and Boris Rankov as The Athenian Trireme.