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Fatherland

Fatherland was a bestseller for Robert Harris and it's easy to see why. The story of a SS Detective in the 1960's, twenty some years after a Nazi victory in WWII, it effortlessly melds speculative fiction and noir into a very readable novel. 

I certainly enjoyed it, but I will say the center of the "mystery" was a little obvious, I don't want to spoil anything here so forgive the vagueness, but I bet, if you asked 1000 people to write an original outline for a book like this, 980 would feature the same plot point. 

Aside from that, which is probably just me being a nitpicker, it was very good. 

Grade: A-

read in early October

A Book from my Past

In the late '80's I bought The Complete Films of John Wayne, by Mark Ricci and Boris and Steve Zmijewsky. It's a reference guide to each of the 169 feature films Wayne made in his lifetime, and I purchased it not only because I was a fan of the Duke, but because at the time I was heavily invested in watching classic movies on AMC (back when that was American Movie Classics). 

It's rather a no-frills guide, with a summary of each movie and relevant production data, but very few, if any, behind the scenes snippets and only  black and white photographs.. 

Still, having gotten rid of the book decades ago, I was very happy when my new (to me) copy arrived in the mail recently. Welcome home Mr. Wayne. 

The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie

 I'm all for troubled heroes, but I don't like troubling ones. And Boone Caudill, the main character in this epic tale of the American West, is about as troubling as a hero can get. 

That's how a review of The Big Sky, the classic Western masterpiece by Pulitzer Prize winner A.B. Guthrie, begins on Goodreads, setand a sad testament it is to the state of the reading public. So enamored are we now of "representation" that we are incapable of immersing oursleves in a novel unless the character looks like us, thinks like us, acts like us - or, to be more precise, acts like the saint we imagine ourselves to be. 

Boone Caudill is not, by the way, the "hero" of the novel, as there is no hero to be found. He is the main character, but only if you ignore the American West itself, the true and only pure character to be found. The novel opens with Boone the victim of parental abuse, and in short order he is chased, betrayed, framed, tortured by a lawman, and made a fugitive. Caudill, a man of many internal flaws, came by them the hard way. 

Set in the 1830's, there is a narrative thread connecting the characters from start to finish, but a thread is all it is. The Big Sky is not concerned about plot or structure. It's more a tale of barely related,  self contained episodes of Caudill's life. 

Be forewarned that life can be dark.  I've already mentioned how the book begins; before it ends there will be murder,  mutilation,  rape, starvation, spousal abuse,  cannibalism, and betrayal.  No one is immune,  not the white characters, not the natives, and it occurs without judgement, just another part of the wild land the characters inhabit.

There is beauty too,  in Guthrie's pen and his insights into the world he so thoroughly and lovingly creates. 

I did NOT have difficulty reading about a troubled lead,  but I did have issues with the frequent use of the N word.  I know,  different era,  different people,  and I'm sure it's accurate to 1837. It was still jarring to read in 2024, especially as it was hard to put my finger on just how it was being used.  I could be wrong,  but I think it was only used once in reference to a black man, was more often than not to describe themselves (white), and in all its uses it seemed rarely to be an insult. Again,  jarring and confusing. 

It is a great novel,  but don't expect sunshine and lollipops.

Grade: B

The Mercy of Gods by James SA Corey

After reading a single book in the last two years,  I've now started and finished two in the last week. 

I guess the anti-depressants are working. 

The Mercy of Gods is the first novel in a new space opera series by James SA Corey, the author(s) of The Expanse.

A planet not our own, but populated by humans with a society much like ours, is invaded and conquered by a race of aliens.  These invaders kidnap a group of human scientists and invite them to continue their work, with the reward for success being life in captivity and failure bringing the end of human history.  Unbeknownst to friend and foe alike, one of the humans is a mole,  planted by a race already at war with the invaders, with the goal of learning information to rid the universe of the invaders once and for all. 

The book is grand in scope and intricate in detail, and I loved it.  I regret that I found the series at its birth,  because it will be years before I get to read the next installment 

Well done.

Grade: A

The Shootist

 

For the first time in over a year I finished reading a book, and my word did I pick a good one. 

The Shootist is a novel by Glendon Swarthout, and served as the basis for the movie of the same name that became John Wayne's final role on film. It's about John Barnard Books, a middle aged gunfighter who travels to El Paso to see a surgeon he trusts. That doctor verifies what he already knew, that he is dying of prostate cancer. Taking up a room in the boarding house of a widow and her troubled teenage son, Books determines that the illness will not best him; instead, he intends to leave the world as he lived it, with a gun in his hand. 

From the start Swarthout charms you with the poetry of his language, the wonderful descriptions of people and places, and insightful glimpes into the inner workings of the main characters. This was once voted as one of the greatrest Westerns of the 20th century, and they weren't wrong. 

I can't say I love the ending, which is much darker than the film. But I cannot say it was the wrong choice, as it fits perfetctly into the tale. 

Grade: A+

Willie Mays

 Willie Mays, in my opinion the greatest center fielder of any era, a man with 660 home runs to his name, who loved the game and was loved by it in return, has died at 93.

Long  ago, as a senior in high school, I set out to learn everything I could about baseball in the way I knew best: through books. One of those books was Say Hey,  one of a few autobiographies Mays put out in his lifetime. It wasn't the greatest book on the sport that I would ever read, and I remember that each chapter ended with a summation of that season stats. Stii, it was enough to convince me that people were right when they said that he was one of the best ever.

RIP 

Tales of Time and Space

In middle school my Dad briefly held a part-time job at a motel, a Holiday Inn I think. It might have been just to earn Christmas money, because I wouldn't remember it at all if it wasn't for an employee Breakfast with Santa.

Here's what I recall about that event: I was disappointed as heck in the food, which was cereal and milk - I was used to Federation's grand pancake version.  

Secondly, I loved my gift.   In retrospect, I have to think my Dad put in a suggestion for me, because what middle schooler goes gaga over a paperback of Tales of Time and Space, compiled by editor Ross Olney?

I loved that story collection. That book became a sentimental favorite for me, and one story, Of Missing Persons by Jack Finney shook my world. 

If I still have my copy, it's boxed somewhere and MIA, but it will always linger in my memory. 

Found it!!

Just a day ago I asked about a science-fiction short story anthology I had as a kid, the title of which had been lost to me for decades. 

It took a reader on Sci-Fi Stack Exchange all of about twenty minutes to give me an answer. 

Beyond the Stars: Tales of Adventure in Time and Space not only included the only known excerpt from the original Star Wars novelization, it also had an excerpt from a Doctor Who novel, a fact I had completely forgotten but that roared back with full clarity once I saw the table of contents. It also had a weird combination of Star Wars cosplay and Battlestar Galactica Vipers on the cover!

I found a copy for under six bucks on Ebay (albeit with no cover photo) and ordered it on the spot. It'll be good to have it back "home" on my shelves. 

Star Wars Question

In my childhood I was gifted a hardcover sci-fi short story anthology that featured an excerpt from the novelization of Star Wars by George Lucas/Alan Dean Foster. As I recall, it was from their time on the Death Star, and it was illustrated with sketches that were either drawn a) by someone who'd never seen the movie or b) by someone really careful to avoid recreating the movie designs for legal reasons.

I mention that the book was hardcover, but as I recall the dark cover was oddly glossy.  For some reason now lost to my subconscious, I think the book may have been published in England. 

Does anyone know what this collection was called? Does anyone know where I can find a list of collections that were authorized to excerpt the novelization? 

Does it Ring a Bell?

Ok, I've long forgotten the name of a book I read and I need some help finding the title: 

I read this maybe 30 years ago. but to be safe lets say somewhere between 1986 and 1995, but probably right in the middle of that span. 

Science fiction paperback, average length. I don't recall anything about the cover. 

There are two planets, neither one Earth, existing in the same solar system; one might have actually been the moon of the other. 

One of the globes is filled with human colonists, the other with a race of bipedal deer-like creatures that are our equal in intelligence. The two sides go to war. At some point the protagonist becomes a POW and develops a quasi-friendship, or at least a mutual respect, with the warden. This was NOT a children's book; at one point a POW caught raping his fellow inmates is dispatched by the protagonist with the wardens approval. 

Any ideas?

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera, the Czech novelist driven into exile in France in the '70's after being declared an enemy of the state, has died in Paris at age 94.

Kundera was eventually granted French citizenship and considered himself a French writer, but both his life and his work are intrinsically tied to his Communist homeland.  Here in the West he is perhaps best known for his novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being," which was later made into a movie. 

My knowledge of him, however, comes from my collegiate focus on Central Europe. In at least one of my courses he was highlighted as an important voice of the Prague Spring, a short-lived era of relaxed authoritarianism and heightened freedom - all of which was snuffed out by the Soviet invasion of 1968. 

My memory is unclear, but I might have read his work "The Joke" at that time. 

RIP

Anne Perry

Anne Perry, the crime novelist who, as a teenager, helped murder her best friend's mother - a crime immortalized in the Kate Winslet movie Heavenly Creatures - has died at 84.

RIP

Thumbs up from R.L. Stine

goosebumps man responded -  YaYa

Barbara Park

Barbara Park, the author of the Junie B Jones series that introduced YaYa to reading and gave Junie her well deserved nickname, has sucumbed to cancer at 66.

RIP - you made a difference to this family.

Lapvona by Otessa Moshfegh

I will not deny that Otessa Moshfegh is a talented stylist capable of keen insight into a character's motivation.  But Lapvona is proof that alone is not enough to sustain a novel. 

In a fictional Medevial village Marek is the deformed son of incestuous rape, raised by an abusive stepfather to believe his mother has died.  The teenager commits a crime that, incredibly, elevates him to royal status, and in the aftermath the difficult life of the village begins to sour all the more. 

It sounds almost like a story when I summarize it. It is not.  It is a meandering, pointless snippet from the life of a thinly developed protagonist who, in turn, is surrounded by equally ill developed characters. These people exist in print only to allow the author to showcase rape, cannibalism, sexual abuse, and degradation.

It's not literary horror. What it WAS is a waste of my time. 

Pass.

Reviver by Seth Patrick

 

Junie finished reading this book earlier this year, after taking it off Lulu's bookshelf, and I picked up after getting hooked on the first few chapters.  So that means 3 of us have read it.

Unfortunately, those first chapters were a bait and switch. It began as a unique and terrifying premise - forensic artists can resurrect dead victims just long enough to coax the name of their killer, only now, something far darker wants to cross the divide into our world.  Aaaaand then it devolved into a run of the mill thriller novel, complete with unnecessary romance, hokey cliffhangers, yada yada. 

When I asked Junie her opinion of it, to see if it matched mine, she merely shrugged and said "It was a book."

I grade it a C.

Voyage on the Great Titanic

One of YaYa's self-described favorite books of her childhood. 

Davy Crockett by Stewart H. Holbrook

This was one of my favorite books as a kid. Part of the Landmark series of nonfiction, I checked it out again and again from the school library.

Two Books Junie Read

Junie can't stop raving about They Both Die At The End by Adam Silvera.

On the other hand,  the book I  got her, The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan was apparently a disappointment - much like people who dislike my recommendations. Grrrr