Recent Reading - 2012

 

2012-12-31
The Lady in the Lake
Raymond Chandler

Maybe style isn't everything.

I liked the writing, and the character of Marlowe is just what I like in a private investigator, but not like all the others in books I've read. Some of the descriptions of California seem dated, but that makes sense.  The local sheriff was terrific.

While there were red herrings thrown around, the central story may have been too simple, overtaking the style which I enjoyed. The clues to the eventual outcome seemed pretty obvious, and that kept me from loving the story. This was my first book from Raymond Chandler. It's clear I'll be reading more from Raymond Chandler, though. Glad the library is only a couple of blocks away.

The html source I read (converted to ePub so I could read on my Nook) was from Russia. The conversion had a bunch of scan errors. They were disconcerting, to be sure.
Recommended

2012-11-27
The Bowl of Heaven
Gregory Benford and Larry Niven

Earth launches a ram scoop starship. The dust of space is its fuel and it is headed for a potential new world that has been called Glory. Part of the way there, the senior science officer is awakened by the then-current maintenance crew. An odd object has appeared almost straight ahead. Their drive is also working just badly enough that they'll never make it to Glory, not alive. What they find is another of Niven's world creations like Ringworld. This is the first book of a series.
Highly recommended

2012-11-05
Painted Ladies
Robert B. Parker

Spenser goes to work to protect an art expert during a ransom exchange. He fails when the art expert is blown up by a bomb attached to the ransomed painting. Spenser feels compelled to find out who did it. He's very dissatisfied with failing at a job.
Highly recommended.

2012-10-31
Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins

Book two of the Hunger Games trilogy takes Katniss and Peeta from their recovery after winning the games in the first book. There's a victory tour with some significant twists that set the stage for a very strange set of events at the next Games. The next games are the 75th anniversary Games, the third Quarter Quell. Nothing goes as expected.
Highly recommended

2012-10-15
The Alchemist of Souls
Anne Lyle

Lyle's first novel got started in a jumble of events, introducing several characters quickly. Once the strange world of an alternate Elizabethan era with new world (as in the Americas) non-human trading partners becomes apparent, the interwoven story of Coby and Maliverny moves right along. There's the intrigue of court, spies everywhere. There's a contest of stage plays to be judged by the ambassador of the "skraylings". Mal has to be his bodyguard, a special request of the ambassador. Coby has to keep the mix of players properly dressed as the tailor of the Suffolk's Men troupe of players. Oh, and there's Mal's twin brother to consider.

2012-09-11
Werehunter
Mercedes Lackey

Short stories, a couple on the same theme fill this book. They are mainly fantasy or science fiction. The first story, "Werehunter", of the book's title is the least interesting for me. I liked the S'Kitty stories and there's even a Bolo story based on the Keith Laumier series.
Recommended

2012-08-30
Lie Down with the Devil
Linda Barnes

Cape Cod and the Nausett Indians feature in this Carlotta Carlisle mystery book. Investigating a fiancĂ© for a bride-to-be turns into a search for murderers and connections to the mob, especially Sam Gianelli, Carlotta's on/off lover. Connections get stronger and others get broken. Sister Paoulina  needs help from the psychiatric staff at McLean Hospital. This might be a more intense book than some others from the series.
Recommended

2012-08-22
The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins

Well written and nominally Young Adult (YA), The Hunger Games has compelling characters, especially the heroine, Katniss, effectively non-stop action and a story worth reading. The writing is good. It doesn't surprise me that it has a following.
Highly Recommended

2012-08-20
Grim Companion
Andre Norton

Taking a job as a nanny gets Kilda off planet, but her two charges aren't quite what they seem. When a field trip goes wrong, Kilda must exceed her skills and get the children safely "home."

This mix of space opera and fantasy wasn't quite either.
Skip it.

2012-08-13
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy

A country girl with an ancient family connection. Can she marry a gentleman from a clerical family? What if she has a secret?
This book tore at my heart. Now, should it be assigned as a "classic" for students in college or even high school? I'd say resoundingly, "No!" This book is for an adult audience. It needs a reader with a love of words, willingness to deal with the usage of the late 1800s and maturity to understand the motives of the characters. This book does not need to be studied, dissected and analyzed as an assignment.
Highly recommended.

2012-08-01
Dark Piper
Andre Norton

After the intergalactic wars wind down, few return home, but Lugard does. He befriends a group of youth scouts on a peaceful planet, but the remnants of war don't leave them alone.

Written in the 1960s, the science fiction still works.
Recommended

2012-07-20
Rogue Moon
Algis Budrys

Facing certain death is one thing. Facing it over and over is another. A presence on the Earth's moon demands study, and the only successful path is to teleport a person to explore it. The problem is that the person is going to fail. By teleporting two copies, one back to the lab on Earth, experience will grow with each trip, though.
Good analysis of the effect of technology.
Recommended.

2012-07-11
Three to Get Deadly
Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum needs to find Uncle Mo, the burg's beloved candy story owner. He's missing, besides being a "failure to appear." The bodies begin to pile up, literaly around Stephanie herself. Joe Morelli is no help, but Lula begins to be more than a filing clerk. The Buick runs fine, but Stephanie decides a small truck is better.
Recommended

2012-07-06
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Steig Larsson

Lisbeth Salander takes a vacation. Millenium Magazine plans to publish a scathing story of the sex trade. Things don't work out. People get killed and Salander is right in the middle. She needs friends and effectively doesn't have any. Zala is the key, whoever he is.

I liked the first of the Salander novels, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I liked this one even more: edge of the seat reading.
Highly Recommended


2012-07-02
Little Scarlet
Walter Mosley

Easy Rawlins small office isn't burned out, but the shoe repair shop downstairs is smashed and gutted as the 1965 Watts Riots tear Los Angeles apart. In the midst of the general destruction, a black woman saves the life of a white man and her kindness gets her killed. The police ask Easy to help investigate to prevent a resurgence of violence. It isn't a friendly gesture, just pragmatic, get a Negro to investigage to help keep the lid on.
Highly Recommended.


2012-06-23
Telegraph Days
Larry McMurtry

The "Old West" wasn't, perhaps, as picturesque as movies and dime novels of the age suggest. However, McMurtry reveals some of its ordinary and some of its pageant qualities in this easy-to-read story of Nellie Courtwright, who variously lives in and moves through Oklahoma, Arizona, Nebraska and eventually California. Along the way, there are Buffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt and the other Earp brothers, and other contemporary ruffians and heros.
Highly Recommended

2012-06-10
Burning Cards
M.E. Patterson

Angels and Demons battle with the assistance of human minions. At risk, control of Hell. Las Vegas is the nexus of the story which also enters the "not there" world of Hell.

The main character is the luckiest man in the world who survived a plane crash from 30,000 feet. He's a gambling wizard with powers given him (apparently in the first book of the series which I have not read). The book mainly stands on its own, but it is full of references to events from the first book. There are so many references that it is clear the second volume isn't independent. It bugged me a bit, though I enjoyed the writing.
Mildly Recommended

2012-05-15
It Can't Happen Here
Sinclair Lewis

Tongue in cheek?

Did Sinclair Lewis begin the book with the attitude that keeping the book's tone light would keep from ruffling feathers?
He either seems to be softpedaling or pointing the finger at "everybody", communists, socialists, laborers, bankers, Republicans, Democrats, so no one group will be offended. He singled out Upton Sinclair several times. I read that Upton Sinclair was a guide of sorts to Sinclair Lewis. It also intrigued me that war preparation was a strong excuse for the spread of the Minute Men, but oddly no wars occurred during the book. The sad truth is that Europe was on the brink of war when the book was written and facism got its hyper-nationalist expression there.

Like some earlier commenters, I was less taken by the first half than the second half of the book.

The Windrip crowd does seem familiar in our modern US. Some people do seem to be able to swallow almost any ideology, no matter how inconsistent it is as long as it gets delivered well.

I did think Doremus Jessup seemed to be too easily able to sneak around for a very long time, printing his anti-Windrip paper. While that made the book seem naive, the cold, swift "justice" handed out by Judge Swan was brutal and scary, as it was put in contrast with the games that Sissy, Buck and Doremus seemed to be playing.

I was reminded of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood which seemed significantly more possible. That book took only a single state or small territory into the control of an extreme faction. Still, the title It Can't Happen Here clearly states my feeling that we who vote are smarter than the book's Americans of 1935-36.

Yet...

2012-02-04
Two for the Dough
Janet Evanovich

Dead bodies and a morgue, lots of funerals. Good fun.
Recommended

2012-03-12
Drood
Dan Simmons

Some books are long, and I'm compelled to turn the pages as fast as I can to get to the next chapter. The next volume of a trilogy or even a series of that sort can't come out soon enough.

With other books, the next page is words to skim until the last of them is "consumed."

Drood was not horrible enough. The style is too civilized. While William Wilkie Collins may have believed there was a monster on the servant's stairs, I did not. After the train wreck at Staplehurst, the book wandered. The best parts of the book were the descriptions of the life of Charles Dickens, but that interesting biographical material was overlaid with schlock, the story of Collins, the purported author of Drood.

Wilkie wasn't a sympathetic character, perhaps as vile as his treatment of Caroline G. suggests. I really didn't care if the pale figure of Drood "actually" inserted a beetle in him. It made as much sense, that the beetle and cape shrouded Drood himself were merely silly elements of a meandering ramble of Wilkie's writing and his drug-fogged mind.

It appears we are supposed to take the writing at face value, that the book was written by someone from the Victorian era. In fact, Simmons may have done such a great job of channeling Wilkie Collins that his own writing skills were submerged and the story suffered from Simmons' successful reproduction of Wilkie Collins' style.

Like clong, I'm going to seek out something by Collins. If, in fact, Simmons has accurately reproduced the style of Wilkie Collins' writing, I'll probably abandon the book within 100 pages. Under ordinary circumstances, that's the limit for a book I'm not enjoying. In the case of Drood, the need to go further for the book group kept me slogging on. I'm reading less than usual these days, and I'm glad this long volume is over. To be honest, I had jury duty today. I read the final 100 pages only this morning while waiting through the process of jury selection. I couldn't keep myself focused on reading even though we were finally rushing along to the fifth anniversary of Staplehurst and Wilkie's murderous plans. I admit to skimming quite a bit.

Not recommended
 
2012-02-23
Under the Dome
Stephen King

Suddenly one afternoon, a dome surrounds the town of Chester's Mill, precisely along all the borders with neighboring jurisdictions. Sound and light do travel through, but not objects and not living things. Air and water penetrate, but poorly. The town is totally isolated in the fall in Maine.

The story is mainly simple. We follow several characters starting with the initial shock of a plane crashing into the dome with the wife of a town selectman at the controls. It isn't a peaceful story, but it stays "small." It stays the story of people and what they do under stress. Some handle it better, some much worse. There is a power struggle, some people get killed and others even commit suicide. Throughout, we are helped to focus on what people can do to each other when they are trapped, isolated and insulated from the direct influence of the outside world.

Strongly recommended

2012-01-03
The Swiss Family Robinson
Johann David Wyss
The Swiss Family Robinson or "How to raise a God fearing family while learing about all the animals and plants in the world and building as many dwellings as possible."

As stories go, this one was pretty flat, considering the circumstances into which the characters are put by the author. To be fair, I read elsewhere that the book wasn't really a book originally, more like a series of object lessons for a minister's sons.

Later, the object lesson stories were compiled into a book. Nobody was killed. That would have ruined the object lessons. Few serious problems actually happened, though there were moments of dire potential.

There wasn't strong character development. Skill development seemed more important (except for strong moral development).

I won't recommend the book for readers, but think it probably was good fodder for screen writers.

I think the elements of the book which bothered me most were: Too many settlements and remote building projects. The tree house and Rockhome were enough. Too many animals and plants from all over the globe, lions, tigers, elephants, bears, jackals, wolves, potatoes, wheat, maize corn, cloves, truffles, dates, cocoanuts, cocoa plants, etc.

I had the sense that the various "authors" who contributed to the text were junior naturalists who read widely about the distant shores and had justifiable fascination with what those creatures were all about. The stories covered ground that didn't actually exist: New Switzerland.
Not recommended so much as "expected to be read" as a classic