#8 December, 2016- End of the Year, what's worth the reading effort?
Hope the year has been reasonably good and you, my reader (if such exists), has some quiet time to put feet up and get down with a good book. Several new books by that stalwart thriller writer, Thomas Perry, caught my eye recently. Perry, the author of the "Butcher's Boy" and Jane Whitefield series, introduces two married couples, Sid and Veronica Abel, who retired from the LAPD and are private investigators and Nicole and Ed Hoyt who are very well-paid assassins for hire. When the body of a black man, who is a scientist for an LA company, turns up in the LA storm sewer with two bullets in his brain and the police case is very cold after a year, the Abels are hired to investigate. And when their investigation leads to a very serious attempt on their lives and home, they try to tackle the assassins. Both couples are very interesting and the plot ticks along as they all discover who is paying the Hoyts and why the man had to die.
Perry's latest will be published in January and is certainly worth the wait. "The Old Man" is Dan Chase, a 60s something widower living quietly with his two big dogs in rural Vermont, but an observation on the street while walking his dogs sets him off. Thirty-five years earlier,as a military intelligence officer in the middle east, Chase was supposed to deliver a large amount of cash to a rebel leader, but he didn't and now enemies from overseas and within the US government want an accounting and his life. But Chase has skills,many complete identities, millions of legitimately earned dollars squirreled away in accounts around the country and world, a daughter who is privy to his story, and his two, big dogs who have their own very special skills.
I was in New Orleans in September-- and if you think you know humidity, forget it...NOLA works in humidity like Rembrandt worked in oil-- for the Bouchercon Mystery Writers Convention and it was excellent. I picked up the Perry book and several others awaiting reading, but I had to read Julie Smith's "New Orleans Noir: The Classics" part of the Akashic Press series. The 18 stories are presented chronologically from one written in 1843 about a strange, slave-related tradition to several post-Katrina period stories. All are set within the fascinating neighborhoods of New Orleans and are illustrated on a map of the city. Authors included in this collection are Kate Chopin, O Henry, Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams, Shirley Ann Grau, Ellen Gilchrist, James Lee Burke, Nevada Barr and Ace Atkins. Almost as good as walking through the Quarter at sunrise!
A truly amazing piece of writing is Patrick Hoffman's "White Van" which presents Emily Rosario, a drug-hustling woman of San Francisco's Tenderloin district who grabs a chance to spend some time with a Russian businessman. When she awakens days later in a drug-induced stupr, the Russian has been joined by a woman and a hard looking young man, Emily takes part in a bomb-laden bank robbery that goes wrong, but walks away with the money. A SFPD detective takes on the case as the solution to all his problems and the story scrapes along with no redeeming characters but with a crackling plot that forces attention. Great!
Finally, Patrick Millikin, a bookseller at Scottsdale's Poisoned Pen Bookstore, and an aspiring editor has collected 15 great stories from the A-List of writers in "The Highway Kind:Tales of Fast Cars, Desperate Drivers and Dark Roads. A Labor of Love for him and his authors, these stories are the REAL thing about cars and the road. Contributors include Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, C.J.Box, Diana Gabaldon, Ace Atkins, Wallace Stroby, James Sallis, Joe R. Lansdale, Gary Phillips, Willy Vlautin, and Luis Alberto Urrea. Not a Loser in the Bunch.
Monday, December 5, 2016
Thursday, September 8, 2016
New Stuff and a few Re-reads
#7 August 28, 2016
It has been a while since I last reviewed my reading list and I know I've read more than what I'll list but I can't find any written record. And believe me if I can't remember reading it, you sure wouldn't want to waste time on it. So what have I been reading these past six months that had an impact?
I got a signed copy of Chris Pavone's "The Travelers" at the Tucson Book Festival and wanted to try his writing. Will Rhodes, a writer for Travelers Magazine finds himself and his marriage seriously compromised in a hotel room in Argentina when his lady friend threatens a video of their tryst and then, belts him in the mouth. The hectic pace Rhodes follows trying to find this lady and to discover why his editor seems to be a spy master of international scope is matched by his wife as she slowly reveals her skills and history.
Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize and a fistful of other awards for "The Sympathizer" that serves as a reminder of the Vietnam War 40 years later.An un-named, half Vietnamese, half French man serves as a captain in the South Vietnamese Army in the closing days of the war as his general is planning his escape with extended family to the United States and California. The captain who assists in the escape is actually a spy for the Viet Cong and he continues his reports on the general and other Vietnamese military and political leaders in the US in coded messages to Paris.The twist in the reporting is in how these messages are misunderstood in the communist-controlled Vietnam and what it means to the Sympathiser when he returns to Vietnam.
I really enjoyed Paolo Bacigalupi's "Water Knife" which, while fiction, seems more timely and horrifying as the months go on. Set in an unspecified future, the novel presents a western US that is in complete drought with the Colorado river drying up and the states at war with each other to control access to water. A "water knife", Angel Velasquez is parts detective, murderer, and consigliere for the "Queen of the Colorado", Catherine Case who has partnered with Chinese construction companies to build self-contained and fully-watered "arcologies" in Las Vegas where the super-rich live and gamble. Angel is sent to the hell-hole of Phoenix to investigate rumors of a possible water grant that is senior to all others and may guarantee Phoenix water at the expense of Las Vegas and California. Murders of people in the Phoenix water world and journalism involve Angel with two young women, Lucy Monroe, a journalist and Maria Villarosa, an escapee, migrant from Texas as they work against each other and then cooperate to survive.
It has been a while since I last reviewed my reading list and I know I've read more than what I'll list but I can't find any written record. And believe me if I can't remember reading it, you sure wouldn't want to waste time on it. So what have I been reading these past six months that had an impact?
I got a signed copy of Chris Pavone's "The Travelers" at the Tucson Book Festival and wanted to try his writing. Will Rhodes, a writer for Travelers Magazine finds himself and his marriage seriously compromised in a hotel room in Argentina when his lady friend threatens a video of their tryst and then, belts him in the mouth. The hectic pace Rhodes follows trying to find this lady and to discover why his editor seems to be a spy master of international scope is matched by his wife as she slowly reveals her skills and history.
Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize and a fistful of other awards for "The Sympathizer" that serves as a reminder of the Vietnam War 40 years later.An un-named, half Vietnamese, half French man serves as a captain in the South Vietnamese Army in the closing days of the war as his general is planning his escape with extended family to the United States and California. The captain who assists in the escape is actually a spy for the Viet Cong and he continues his reports on the general and other Vietnamese military and political leaders in the US in coded messages to Paris.The twist in the reporting is in how these messages are misunderstood in the communist-controlled Vietnam and what it means to the Sympathiser when he returns to Vietnam.
I really enjoyed Paolo Bacigalupi's "Water Knife" which, while fiction, seems more timely and horrifying as the months go on. Set in an unspecified future, the novel presents a western US that is in complete drought with the Colorado river drying up and the states at war with each other to control access to water. A "water knife", Angel Velasquez is parts detective, murderer, and consigliere for the "Queen of the Colorado", Catherine Case who has partnered with Chinese construction companies to build self-contained and fully-watered "arcologies" in Las Vegas where the super-rich live and gamble. Angel is sent to the hell-hole of Phoenix to investigate rumors of a possible water grant that is senior to all others and may guarantee Phoenix water at the expense of Las Vegas and California. Murders of people in the Phoenix water world and journalism involve Angel with two young women, Lucy Monroe, a journalist and Maria Villarosa, an escapee, migrant from Texas as they work against each other and then cooperate to survive.
Monday, March 28, 2016
#6-- 2016 is a quarter over, so what has Ted been reading?
I ended 2015 with a reading of J.K.Rowling/Robert Galbraith "The Cuckoo's Calling", her foray into mystery writing. I certainly enjoyed her descriptions of London and her attention to detail. But it seemed to me she needed some reining in/editorial control with a massive number of plot elements that, in the end, made sense in tying the story together, but seemed to take several pages on each element to be identified. It brought back memories of reading all the Harry Potter books to my son over the span of 12 years, most evenings-- I loved the locations and characters, but she never seemed happy with a simple statement.
I needed to get back to my crime roots so I picked up the latest from Scottish author Malcolm Mackay, "Every Night I Dream of Hell."This book follows his hugely successful, award-winning Glasgow Trilogy-The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, The Sudden Arrival of Violence and How a Gunman Says Goodbye. The Jamieson gang that ran drugs, prostitution and petty crime in Glasgow, Scotland has been weakened by prison sentences or death for the leaders and a new gang has shown up assassinating a low level gangster. Nate Colgan is the newly appointed "security advisor" and he must take charge. But why did his ex-girlfriend (and mother of his daughter) suddenly return to Glasgow at the same time as the new gang is making its move?
This book continues the stark dialog and sometime internal ethical debate among crooks as small-time crooks strive to do each other in to take over.
A new author beckoned and I fell for it-- Charles McCarry, ex-CIA operative presents his latest "The Mulberry Bush" about a young man who is the best assassin of jihadist leaders in the middle east, but is re-called to HQ/CIA to take a new assignment in Argentina contacting a beautiful young woman who may have contacts with Russian spies.Her parents were murdered decades earlier in "The Disappearance" of communists but her connections run deep and may fit into the CIA operative's plan to destroy the Agency from within.
I read a collection of stories by Tim Johnston called the "Irish Girl" after reading his great book"Descent" in 2015. He is a writing professor at the University of Memphis and we got together for coffee on one of my grand-daughter visits to Memphis after I had read about half of his book. I was blown away with what I had read already and the rest of the book was a runaway truck ride as he concluded the story of a family's disintegration when the daughter disappears, apparently kidnapped, and there are no clues as to what happened.
Reading the stories written before the novel was published is very revealing of his talent. Most are set in the midwest, small towns where bad luck, bad timing are constants and it's usually revealed right before disaster strikes.
For something totally different, I read and would recommend two books by George Makana Clark-- "The Raw Man" and "The Small Bees' Honey: Stories." Clark's novel" The Raw Man" published in 2011 is the story of Sergeant Gordon's life in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Africa as told in reverse chronological order. Beginning from his capture by partisans and imprisonment in a horrible, underground copper mine where the only food was roasted,fellow prisoners and stretching back through his very dysfunctional teen years, youth, childhood and family, his story intertwines with that of Rhodesia and civil war until his family story becomes clear and yet mystically challenging.
"The Small Bees' Honey" published 14 years before the novel contain early drafts of some of the ideas presented in the novel as well as the tone that permeates the novel. Racial makeup, history, and personality drive these stories set in Africa, Central America and, eventually, America. This book is equally amazing but not an easy read. So that's what I've been reading this quarter.
I ended 2015 with a reading of J.K.Rowling/Robert Galbraith "The Cuckoo's Calling", her foray into mystery writing. I certainly enjoyed her descriptions of London and her attention to detail. But it seemed to me she needed some reining in/editorial control with a massive number of plot elements that, in the end, made sense in tying the story together, but seemed to take several pages on each element to be identified. It brought back memories of reading all the Harry Potter books to my son over the span of 12 years, most evenings-- I loved the locations and characters, but she never seemed happy with a simple statement.
I needed to get back to my crime roots so I picked up the latest from Scottish author Malcolm Mackay, "Every Night I Dream of Hell."This book follows his hugely successful, award-winning Glasgow Trilogy-The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, The Sudden Arrival of Violence and How a Gunman Says Goodbye. The Jamieson gang that ran drugs, prostitution and petty crime in Glasgow, Scotland has been weakened by prison sentences or death for the leaders and a new gang has shown up assassinating a low level gangster. Nate Colgan is the newly appointed "security advisor" and he must take charge. But why did his ex-girlfriend (and mother of his daughter) suddenly return to Glasgow at the same time as the new gang is making its move?
This book continues the stark dialog and sometime internal ethical debate among crooks as small-time crooks strive to do each other in to take over.
A new author beckoned and I fell for it-- Charles McCarry, ex-CIA operative presents his latest "The Mulberry Bush" about a young man who is the best assassin of jihadist leaders in the middle east, but is re-called to HQ/CIA to take a new assignment in Argentina contacting a beautiful young woman who may have contacts with Russian spies.Her parents were murdered decades earlier in "The Disappearance" of communists but her connections run deep and may fit into the CIA operative's plan to destroy the Agency from within.
I read a collection of stories by Tim Johnston called the "Irish Girl" after reading his great book"Descent" in 2015. He is a writing professor at the University of Memphis and we got together for coffee on one of my grand-daughter visits to Memphis after I had read about half of his book. I was blown away with what I had read already and the rest of the book was a runaway truck ride as he concluded the story of a family's disintegration when the daughter disappears, apparently kidnapped, and there are no clues as to what happened.
Reading the stories written before the novel was published is very revealing of his talent. Most are set in the midwest, small towns where bad luck, bad timing are constants and it's usually revealed right before disaster strikes.
For something totally different, I read and would recommend two books by George Makana Clark-- "The Raw Man" and "The Small Bees' Honey: Stories." Clark's novel" The Raw Man" published in 2011 is the story of Sergeant Gordon's life in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Africa as told in reverse chronological order. Beginning from his capture by partisans and imprisonment in a horrible, underground copper mine where the only food was roasted,fellow prisoners and stretching back through his very dysfunctional teen years, youth, childhood and family, his story intertwines with that of Rhodesia and civil war until his family story becomes clear and yet mystically challenging.
"The Small Bees' Honey" published 14 years before the novel contain early drafts of some of the ideas presented in the novel as well as the tone that permeates the novel. Racial makeup, history, and personality drive these stories set in Africa, Central America and, eventually, America. This book is equally amazing but not an easy read. So that's what I've been reading this quarter.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
#5 Central Europe (CE)-- THE READING LIST
So what have I been reading during the past six months? I would guess some of you reading this blog know I toured Central Europe( shortened to CE) for 25 days in August, September with my brother, sister-in-law and 26 other retired academics from Ohio, Michigan and Indiana under the auspices of Friendship Force, an international travel and hosting organization working to improve understanding and knowledge of people and places around the world. The trip covered Slovakia, Vienna, Slovenia,Croatia, Hungary and back through Slovakia by motor coach, seeing many spectacular sights, eating great food and drinking fine wines and beers, and just generally having a swell time.
My older brother was in charge of this trip so you know where this is going. If you have an older brother, especially one who was a teacher, department head of a college department and dean of arts and sciences, you know the trip will be well planned. Integral to this was the reading and viewing list stretching several hundred pages about each country, city and site to be visited so we would be prepared. While most travelers ignored the list, I viewed and read as time allowed. I would certainly recommend movies like Kolya and A Shop on Main Street as excellent introductions to understanding Central Europe.
The books that I read that were most helpful to me were also limited. I read a number of stories in "Description of a Struggle: the Vintage Book of Contemporary Eastern European Writing" that collected 43 stories from authors in 16 countries. One story, I think called "The War", sticks in my memory especially as we travelled through what was Yugoslavia and the scene of so much fighting from World War l through the civil wars as the country broke up in the 1980s after the death of Tito. A small company of soldiers crosses a mountain pass and comes on a town, silent with death. Upon inspection, it appears partisans from the opposition have massacred everyone, stolen everything and moved on. The kicker is neither group of soldiers is named-- are they Nazis, slavic partisans, communists? It doesn't matter in the utter horror of war.
Simon Winder's "Danubia" was also on the list so I gave it a try and read the whole deal, all 576 pages of history of the Habsburg Empire that ran Central Europe from Bratislava and Vienna for 500 years until World War l brought Austria and Emperor Franz Joseph to an end. The book was equal parts interesting history, travel narrative and the author's views(sometimes odd) on music, culture, food, sex. animals in zoos.
A book not on the list but of great interest is a brand new book, "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning" by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. I read this before the trip and it framed a lot of my thinking as we traveled. Snyder's thesis is that to understand the Holocaust, one must understand Adolf Hitler and his deterministic view that people and races could be eliminated or enslaved if they prevented the master group's progress. He admired the US removal of native American people from lands that were needed for farming, mining and sought to do that in CE with the goal to make the Ukraine a German territory. When military victories over the Soviet Union stopped at Moscow's outskirts, Hitler thought his goal in the war would be to totally eradicate the Jews, gypsies,and all other "undesirables" from Europe leading to the change from casual death pits at the edge of towns to an industrial model that led to Auschwitz.This is an important book that doesn't just deal with the past, but looks at the condition of today and asks if it could happen again.
During the trip I re-read "The Good Soldier Svejk" by Jaroslav Hasek, written in 1923 about the bumbling adventures of a Czech soldier in the services of the Emperor and the Austrian army fighting the slavs and the Russians in WW l. While not a travel book it is very funny and does describe a number of sites visited in CE.
The final book related to the tour was Dan Fesperman's "Lie in the Dark"(1999) which is set in Sarajevo, Bosnia as the Serbs pound the city that hosted the summer Olympics a few years earlier but now is a battlefield in a civil war. Vlado Petric is a city police detective who discovers the murdered body of the chief of the federal ministry of special police on the street in "snipers alley". Petric is assigned the investigation as war rages around those left in the city with no food, water, electricity. Corruption and cynicism are the two commodities that rule as Bosnians and Serbs who are sniping and mortaring each other 24/7, deal with each other to sell UN-supplied food. Why was the police chief killed? So that's what I've been reading the past six months.
So what have I been reading during the past six months? I would guess some of you reading this blog know I toured Central Europe( shortened to CE) for 25 days in August, September with my brother, sister-in-law and 26 other retired academics from Ohio, Michigan and Indiana under the auspices of Friendship Force, an international travel and hosting organization working to improve understanding and knowledge of people and places around the world. The trip covered Slovakia, Vienna, Slovenia,Croatia, Hungary and back through Slovakia by motor coach, seeing many spectacular sights, eating great food and drinking fine wines and beers, and just generally having a swell time.
My older brother was in charge of this trip so you know where this is going. If you have an older brother, especially one who was a teacher, department head of a college department and dean of arts and sciences, you know the trip will be well planned. Integral to this was the reading and viewing list stretching several hundred pages about each country, city and site to be visited so we would be prepared. While most travelers ignored the list, I viewed and read as time allowed. I would certainly recommend movies like Kolya and A Shop on Main Street as excellent introductions to understanding Central Europe.
The books that I read that were most helpful to me were also limited. I read a number of stories in "Description of a Struggle: the Vintage Book of Contemporary Eastern European Writing" that collected 43 stories from authors in 16 countries. One story, I think called "The War", sticks in my memory especially as we travelled through what was Yugoslavia and the scene of so much fighting from World War l through the civil wars as the country broke up in the 1980s after the death of Tito. A small company of soldiers crosses a mountain pass and comes on a town, silent with death. Upon inspection, it appears partisans from the opposition have massacred everyone, stolen everything and moved on. The kicker is neither group of soldiers is named-- are they Nazis, slavic partisans, communists? It doesn't matter in the utter horror of war.
Simon Winder's "Danubia" was also on the list so I gave it a try and read the whole deal, all 576 pages of history of the Habsburg Empire that ran Central Europe from Bratislava and Vienna for 500 years until World War l brought Austria and Emperor Franz Joseph to an end. The book was equal parts interesting history, travel narrative and the author's views(sometimes odd) on music, culture, food, sex. animals in zoos.
A book not on the list but of great interest is a brand new book, "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning" by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. I read this before the trip and it framed a lot of my thinking as we traveled. Snyder's thesis is that to understand the Holocaust, one must understand Adolf Hitler and his deterministic view that people and races could be eliminated or enslaved if they prevented the master group's progress. He admired the US removal of native American people from lands that were needed for farming, mining and sought to do that in CE with the goal to make the Ukraine a German territory. When military victories over the Soviet Union stopped at Moscow's outskirts, Hitler thought his goal in the war would be to totally eradicate the Jews, gypsies,and all other "undesirables" from Europe leading to the change from casual death pits at the edge of towns to an industrial model that led to Auschwitz.This is an important book that doesn't just deal with the past, but looks at the condition of today and asks if it could happen again.
During the trip I re-read "The Good Soldier Svejk" by Jaroslav Hasek, written in 1923 about the bumbling adventures of a Czech soldier in the services of the Emperor and the Austrian army fighting the slavs and the Russians in WW l. While not a travel book it is very funny and does describe a number of sites visited in CE.
The final book related to the tour was Dan Fesperman's "Lie in the Dark"(1999) which is set in Sarajevo, Bosnia as the Serbs pound the city that hosted the summer Olympics a few years earlier but now is a battlefield in a civil war. Vlado Petric is a city police detective who discovers the murdered body of the chief of the federal ministry of special police on the street in "snipers alley". Petric is assigned the investigation as war rages around those left in the city with no food, water, electricity. Corruption and cynicism are the two commodities that rule as Bosnians and Serbs who are sniping and mortaring each other 24/7, deal with each other to sell UN-supplied food. Why was the police chief killed? So that's what I've been reading the past six months.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
#4 June 2015- The Never-Open Desert Diner & The World of the Old Ones
#4 June 2015- The Never-Open Desert Diner & The Lost World of the Old Ones
So, what have I been reading since the last posting two years ago? Hard to remember, but I think I read through several series-- Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther books, Henning Mankell's Wallender books, and the Thomas Perry Butcher's Boy series. I'm sure there were many other books picked up and read or abandoned after 100 pages and magazines- Economist, Forbes, Car& Driver, Road & Track, etc. occupy way too much time.
But now I'm ready to report on two new books that have settled into my thoughts and reading time. James Anderson of Oregon and the Four Corners Region debuted with his novel "The Never-Open Desert Diner" early 2015. Ben Jones, a thirty-eight year old, unmarried over-the-road truck driver, is facing the loss of his business and leased truck to bankruptcy as he delivers boxes to one of the most desolate areas of the US-- Utah Highway 117 off US 191 between Price and Rockmuse UT, a ghost town when the coal mines closed. He mostly encounters desert "rats" living in isolation, desert preachers and 79 year old Walt Butterfield, the owner of the Diner and a collection of classic motorcycles that he rides across the desert and on the highways.
Ben meets Claire, a mysterious woman who is living in an abandoned tract house in a development that never developed as she silently plays a cello without strings in a bare living room. Suddenly Ben's life is changed as Claire's story intertwines with the horror of Walt's history and a mystery about a stolen, multi-million dollar cello.The book is a beautifully written presentation of life in the desert with clear evocations of death by dehydration, heat prostration and drowning in a previously dry arroyo balanced with loving depictions of the light of sunrise and sunset, the vegetation and geology and especially the people who live in such an environment.
The second book I want to highlight is David Roberts "The Lost World of the Old Ones:Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest." World-class mountain climber Roberts focuses on the Colorado Plateau in this followup to his earlier, cult-classic"In Search of the Old Ones"(1996) which led to his banning by BLM officials from a number of areas where his descriptions of sites led pot hunters and ruin desecrators to do their bad work. This book is very careful to avoid giving directions, GPS coordinates, etc. to bad actors but it does present updates on Robert's travels, explorations by climbing, hiking,and boating, discoveries of archaeologists and plenty of disagreements about what happened to Folsom people, the Ancient Puebloans/Anasazi, and the people of the Rio Grande. The book is by turns witty, angry and inciteful but it is never boring or overly academic. This is the book for anyone traveling, hiking, climbing the Colorado Plateau.
So, what have I been reading since the last posting two years ago? Hard to remember, but I think I read through several series-- Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther books, Henning Mankell's Wallender books, and the Thomas Perry Butcher's Boy series. I'm sure there were many other books picked up and read or abandoned after 100 pages and magazines- Economist, Forbes, Car& Driver, Road & Track, etc. occupy way too much time.
But now I'm ready to report on two new books that have settled into my thoughts and reading time. James Anderson of Oregon and the Four Corners Region debuted with his novel "The Never-Open Desert Diner" early 2015. Ben Jones, a thirty-eight year old, unmarried over-the-road truck driver, is facing the loss of his business and leased truck to bankruptcy as he delivers boxes to one of the most desolate areas of the US-- Utah Highway 117 off US 191 between Price and Rockmuse UT, a ghost town when the coal mines closed. He mostly encounters desert "rats" living in isolation, desert preachers and 79 year old Walt Butterfield, the owner of the Diner and a collection of classic motorcycles that he rides across the desert and on the highways.
Ben meets Claire, a mysterious woman who is living in an abandoned tract house in a development that never developed as she silently plays a cello without strings in a bare living room. Suddenly Ben's life is changed as Claire's story intertwines with the horror of Walt's history and a mystery about a stolen, multi-million dollar cello.The book is a beautifully written presentation of life in the desert with clear evocations of death by dehydration, heat prostration and drowning in a previously dry arroyo balanced with loving depictions of the light of sunrise and sunset, the vegetation and geology and especially the people who live in such an environment.
The second book I want to highlight is David Roberts "The Lost World of the Old Ones:Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest." World-class mountain climber Roberts focuses on the Colorado Plateau in this followup to his earlier, cult-classic"In Search of the Old Ones"(1996) which led to his banning by BLM officials from a number of areas where his descriptions of sites led pot hunters and ruin desecrators to do their bad work. This book is very careful to avoid giving directions, GPS coordinates, etc. to bad actors but it does present updates on Robert's travels, explorations by climbing, hiking,and boating, discoveries of archaeologists and plenty of disagreements about what happened to Folsom people, the Ancient Puebloans/Anasazi, and the people of the Rio Grande. The book is by turns witty, angry and inciteful but it is never boring or overly academic. This is the book for anyone traveling, hiking, climbing the Colorado Plateau.
Monday, August 5, 2013
#3 Several Exciting ARCs
Sorting through the mailings of ARCs (Advanced Review Copies) received the last few months I found two that promised some great reading... and did they deliver! Larry Watson follows his "American Boy" with another potential "quiet" classic "Let Him Go" set for publication in the coming September. George and Margaret Blackledge live in small town, Dalton North Dakota in 1951 having given up up farming following the death of their son James in a horseback riding accident. George has retired after serving a term as county sheriff and Margaret has busied herself with helping her widowed daughter-in-law, Lorna, raise her grandson Jimmy.
But all has changed as Lorna has met and married a new man Donnie Weboy who hearkens from the eastern Montana town of Gladstone. When Margaret sees Donnie abuse his step-son on the main street of Dalton and Lorna doesn't stand up for her son, Margaret sees she has no option but to gain control of her grandson. When Donnie and Lorna move to eastern Montana with Jimmy, Margaret plans how she can get Jimmy back. And if husband George won't support her, she'll drive there and do the deed herself.
George reluctantly goes with her, but neither planned for the reception given to them by the notorious Weboy family when they expose their plan. And the casual violence of 1951 rural America revisits Watson's earlier classic "Montana 1948" in its ability to both shock and convince the reader of its inevitability.
The second ARC worth getting excited about is the jointly written novel "The Tilted World" to be released October 1 by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. Based on the largest American natural disaster, the unrelenting rains of 1927 and the flooding of the midwest rivers leading to the inevitable disaster of the flooding of the Mississippi, this novel captures the pitch, events, and characters of Prohibition America, the moonshiners cooking their product, paying off whoever needs it and selling up and down the River, and the people of very limited means facing the flood if the levees and sandbags fail.
Two federal revenue agents are dispatched by Commerce secretary Herbert Hoover to Hobnob Landing on the River to investigate moonshiners and the disappearance of two previously assigned agents. Their paths cross an orphaned baby, a major distributor of moonshine and his wife who very professionally cooks the best moonshine on the River. All of this pales in light of plots to blow up the levees, drowning Hobnob and its people to save New Orleans downriver. Fennelly and Franklin offer a mesmerizing tale of evil and unrelenting natural force as flood and treachery mix with heroism and love.
Both books are worthy of a wide readership. Here's hoping for their surprise best-sellerdom.
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