So the last few months have been very conducive to some serious reading and you might be wondering, what's worth the effort? "Backstage Past" by entrepreneur and promoter Barry Fey fills the bill. Fey (1938-2013) lived a much bigger than life, fighting constantly with SOBs like Bill Graham while introducing acts like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix' last US concert, U2's Under a Blood Red Sky at Red Rocks, etc.This book captures that rock history from 1965 to 2000. Fey was no stranger to controversy and he tells his side vociferously, profanely and usually humorously. He provides lists of musicians, politicians, and business people he hated and loved as well as hundreds of photos of the rock legends that played his concerts, ate his barbeque and steaks and made him a legend.
JP Gritton's debut "Wyoming" is equal parts Daniel Woodrell, Annie Proulx, and Frank Bill and that's very good. It’s 1988 and Shelley Cooper is in trouble. He’s broke, he’s been fired from his construction job, and his ex-wife has left him for their next door neighbor and a new life in Kansas City. The only opportunity on his horizon is fifty pounds of his brother’s high-grade marijuana, which needs to be driven from Colorado to Houston and exchanged for a lockbox full of cash. The delivery goes off without a hitch, but getting home with the money proves to be a different challenge altogether. Fueled by a grab bag of resentments and self punishment, Shelley becomes a case study in the question of whether it’s possible to live without accepting yourself, and the dope money is the key to a lock he might never find.
Timothy Egan's latest "A Pilgrimage to Eternity" is equal parts travelog and philosophical, theological and psychological study as he walks, buses, car rides but never flies on the Via Francigena, a 1,000 mile journey from Canterbury Cathedral, England through France and Switzerland to Vatican City. Pilgrimaging by himself except for short stints with his son, daughter and wife, Egan faces his difficult history with the Roman Catholic church while he faces death in his family. The book is a fascinating trip through history and current headlines as Egan faces mortality, splendor, fellow pilgrims and a possible visit with the Pope.
The final book under consideration is one with some current controversy. "American Dirt" by Jeanine Cummins was read as an Advanced Review Copy several months before publication. I would recommend it unreservedly as a novel of great writing and current impact. Lydia Quixano Perez owns a small bookstore in Acapulco, has an 8 year old son Luca and is happily married to journalist Sebastian. The opening pages of the book are absolutely stunning as her life changes forever and she must escape with her son, walking and riding The Beast, railway boxcar roofs from Acapulco to Denver while their lives could end instantly. This is one book that demands non-stop reading!
So to the controversy-- author Cummins was to be in Denver a week ago for a reading at the Tattered Cover bookstore and I was ready to drive down. She had received an Oprah's book club choice and many other accolades pre-publication, a big forward payment, etc. but the week before her publisher had cancelled the balance of her national tour because of fear for her safety. She was criticized for writing this book-- a research and writing project that took 4 years of her life-- as she wrote , not as a Mexican national, but as a white woman(with a Puerto Rican grandmother) and had received all the adulation. My sense of this is just as Shakespeare wrote about women-Juliet,the daughters of King Lear, Portia and Jessica in the Merchant of Venice,etc., Cummins had every right to research and write her book and if political correctness enters 2020 and her safety and the publication of her book are jeopardized, it's one more bad thing. (I step down from my Soapbox). Enjoy!
Sunday, February 9, 2020
Saturday, November 9, 2019
#15--Second Half Wrap-up for 2019- new Sallis, Krueger and other really good stuff to read
In addition to selling, moving from our house of 26 years into another Loveland patio home this summer which involved a lot of recycling, selling stuff, and getting rid of unnecessaries as well as packing Longs Peak Book Company into 105 banker's boxes weighing 40 to 60 pounds each and moving all of that up 10 steps and down 16 into the new house, I've been reading. And what's worthy of your and my time and effort?
As I've said before, any year that brings a new book from James Sallis is, by definition, a good year. Sallis, author of the cult novel Drive and many other books of mystery, translation, poetry and essay brought two into 2019. Difficult Lives, originally published in 1993 and now republished with Hitching Rides are Sallis' seminal essays celebrating and explaining the earlier giants of noir fiction Chester Himes, David Goodis and Jim Thompson who,it could be said were Sallis' creative "fathers." These giants of fiction are joined with contemporary noir writers,some well-known, some unknown in the second half of the book, Hitching Rides. Sallis wrote introductory essays for novels by James Lee Burke, Patricia Highsmith, Paco Taibo, George Pelecanos, Charles Willeford and Shirley Jackson as well as Gerald Kersh, Boris Vian, and Jean-Patrick Manchette. Read this and better understand Noir.
Sallis' new novel for 2019 Sarah Jane is a tour-de-force as told through the eyes and voice of a young woman who lives in the rural South, had a tough childhood and made some bad choices that led to a court-ordered military stint. Then she's back waitressing, recovering from a bad marriage, and learning about law enforcement when she's thrust into the role of sheriff when her boss disappears. As she goes through her daily business she investigates the mystery of this and the impact on the community and her.
An Advanced Review Copy(ARC) I received and read will be published 02/04/2020 and is entitled A Good Neighborhood by best-selling novelist Therese Anne Fowler. An ecology professor at a North Carolina university lives with her bi-racial son in the title neighborhood and all is good as her son finishes his high school career and prepares to go as a scholarship student to California to continue his study as a classical guitarist. New neighbors move in to a scrape-off, mcmansion next door with a in-ground swimming pool that threatens the roots and life of the professor's beloved, historic oak tree. Then the teenage daughter of the new neighbors begins a relationship with the boy next door and modern life and culture intercede.
William Kent Krueger offers another winning stand-alone novel apart from his Cork O'Connell police-procedural series and his previous award winner, Ordinary Grace. This Tender Land is set in 1932 south-central Minnesota as two white brothers, 8 year old Odie, the book's narrator, and 12 year old Albert are orphaned and sent to the Lincoln Indian Training School, which is equal parts concentration and labor camp for area farmers. Their horrible experience with the woman who runs the school and a sadistic teacher forces the boys to escape with a Sioux boy and a 4 year old girl whose mother was killed in a tornado. The plan is to take a stolen canoe down the Gilead and Minnesota Rivers into the Mississippi and get to St. Louis where the brothers have a relative who might care for them. If this sounds like Huck Finn, it is intentional but carried off brilliantly by Krueger who peoples the book with fascinating characters and detail about life during the Depression.
My final book under consideration is The Push:A Climber's Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits written by world-class mountain climber, Tommy Caldwell. Having seen the multi-award winning movie Dawn Wall several times and met the climber-author Caldwell, I felt compelled to read his memoir about his life before, during preparation and the actual climb and afterwards.And I'm very glad I did! This book goes so much beyond the film to explore his life, psyche, training, challenges, triumphs and failures. Actually, the movie, first and the book,second make a great package as Caldwell and some assistant writers and editors really lay out the challenge of attacking something no one ever thought was possible and working for 7 long years to plan, attempt, fail and eventually succeed. This book is THE REAL DEAL!!!
As I've said before, any year that brings a new book from James Sallis is, by definition, a good year. Sallis, author of the cult novel Drive and many other books of mystery, translation, poetry and essay brought two into 2019. Difficult Lives, originally published in 1993 and now republished with Hitching Rides are Sallis' seminal essays celebrating and explaining the earlier giants of noir fiction Chester Himes, David Goodis and Jim Thompson who,it could be said were Sallis' creative "fathers." These giants of fiction are joined with contemporary noir writers,some well-known, some unknown in the second half of the book, Hitching Rides. Sallis wrote introductory essays for novels by James Lee Burke, Patricia Highsmith, Paco Taibo, George Pelecanos, Charles Willeford and Shirley Jackson as well as Gerald Kersh, Boris Vian, and Jean-Patrick Manchette. Read this and better understand Noir.
Sallis' new novel for 2019 Sarah Jane is a tour-de-force as told through the eyes and voice of a young woman who lives in the rural South, had a tough childhood and made some bad choices that led to a court-ordered military stint. Then she's back waitressing, recovering from a bad marriage, and learning about law enforcement when she's thrust into the role of sheriff when her boss disappears. As she goes through her daily business she investigates the mystery of this and the impact on the community and her.
An Advanced Review Copy(ARC) I received and read will be published 02/04/2020 and is entitled A Good Neighborhood by best-selling novelist Therese Anne Fowler. An ecology professor at a North Carolina university lives with her bi-racial son in the title neighborhood and all is good as her son finishes his high school career and prepares to go as a scholarship student to California to continue his study as a classical guitarist. New neighbors move in to a scrape-off, mcmansion next door with a in-ground swimming pool that threatens the roots and life of the professor's beloved, historic oak tree. Then the teenage daughter of the new neighbors begins a relationship with the boy next door and modern life and culture intercede.
William Kent Krueger offers another winning stand-alone novel apart from his Cork O'Connell police-procedural series and his previous award winner, Ordinary Grace. This Tender Land is set in 1932 south-central Minnesota as two white brothers, 8 year old Odie, the book's narrator, and 12 year old Albert are orphaned and sent to the Lincoln Indian Training School, which is equal parts concentration and labor camp for area farmers. Their horrible experience with the woman who runs the school and a sadistic teacher forces the boys to escape with a Sioux boy and a 4 year old girl whose mother was killed in a tornado. The plan is to take a stolen canoe down the Gilead and Minnesota Rivers into the Mississippi and get to St. Louis where the brothers have a relative who might care for them. If this sounds like Huck Finn, it is intentional but carried off brilliantly by Krueger who peoples the book with fascinating characters and detail about life during the Depression.
My final book under consideration is The Push:A Climber's Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits written by world-class mountain climber, Tommy Caldwell. Having seen the multi-award winning movie Dawn Wall several times and met the climber-author Caldwell, I felt compelled to read his memoir about his life before, during preparation and the actual climb and afterwards.And I'm very glad I did! This book goes so much beyond the film to explore his life, psyche, training, challenges, triumphs and failures. Actually, the movie, first and the book,second make a great package as Caldwell and some assistant writers and editors really lay out the challenge of attacking something no one ever thought was possible and working for 7 long years to plan, attempt, fail and eventually succeed. This book is THE REAL DEAL!!!
Thursday, May 23, 2019
#14-- So, what's good in 2019?
During the past 5 months I've had opportunity to read about 10 books, some read about 50 pages and closed and seven read to conclusion. Life's too short to read more than 50 pages if it's a struggle and since no one's paying you to complete the book, close it and move on. You've got my permission.
The 7 that I read start to finish are a mix of fiction and non-fiction so let's get cracking...covers. Two by novelist Lou Berney are definite keepers. November Road won a bunch of awards and was included on many Best of 2018 lists as Berney introduces Frank Guidry, a lieutenant and fixer for New Orleans crime boss, Carlos Marcello. Guidry is sent to Dallas in October 1963 to take care of a small task, but after November 22 and the Crime of the Century-- the murder of JFK, Guidry sees that members of Marcello's gang are turning up dead and he will be next. He takes off for Vegas and an acquaintance who hates Marcello and might protect him, but he runs across a young woman with a broken down car, two daughters and a dog alongside the road. Guidry plots how he can use this situation to mask himself as a "family man" from his hunters by promising to get her a new car in Vegas so she can continue her escape to California from a bad marriage in Oklahoma. Love intercedes but the inevitable does as well.
An earlier novel of Berney's, The Long and Faraway Gone, another award winner including an EDGAR, introduces Wyatt, a private investigator in Vegas, who returns to his hometown, Oklahoma City, where 25 years earlier in 1986, he was the lone survivor of a movie house massacre in which six of his co-workers were shot by robbers. The case he's sent to investigate keeps pulling him back into the movie house murders while his path crosses a woman who lost her older sister to a kidnapper at the state fair that same year. Can their two investigations help them heal or is this another disaster about to happen.
Bruce Berger, a concert pianist and essayist in the style of John McPhee, Mark Twain and Joan Didion, offers his best in a collection titled A Desert Harvest: New and Selected Essays. These are some very short, a page or two, while others are 28-30 pages long. What unites them are Berger's writing style which is excellent and the location of them-- the American Southwest and the Mexican Baja region. These are not current, they are set 20 to 40 years ago and capture a place in time that was not as currently glitzy and tourist obsessed.
One of the best novels I've read in a long time is a debut effort and another EDGAR winner James A McLaughlin called Bearskin. Rice Moore has re-located from the Arizona deserts to Appalachia of western Virginia as he has escaped Mexican prison and the drug cartel that put him there. He now has a new name and a job as caretaker of a wilderness preserve repairing fences, cabins and counting species in the old growth forest. But bear carcasses in his forest introduce him to local law,poachers and local toughs, motorcycle gangs and some very bad people from his past as well as a university professor who was his predecessor at the reserve..
Black Klansman: A Memoir by Ron Stallworth is his story set in 1968 when he was hired as the first African American police officer in a very segregated Colorado Springs. He served his rookie time in records and property but came into his own when he was asked to go undercover into the Black Power community. He expanded his role in police work when he became involved with the Ku Klux Klan that was seeking to expand in Colorado Springs and especially at the military bases in the area. The book reads very matter-of-factly about his work which was sensationalized in the Spike Lee film last year. When asked about his role in creating the film, author Stallworth rolled his eyes, smiled and said nothing, since his book stands on its own.
If you ever read James Grady's debut novel Six Days of the Condor(1974) or saw the Pollack/Redford movie, you might have wondered what happened next to Malcolm aka Condor. Grady has answered your question with the recently published Condor: The Short Takes which collects 5 Condor stories previously published in fairly obscure journals and adds a lengthy novella about Russian entanglements with Condor.
And the final book I enjoyed in my five months of reading is the final book by author Philip Kerr, Metropolis, the 14th in his great Bernie Gunther series. The book also is the introduction to Bernie Gunther as he is taken from regular police work onto the Murder Wagon as a serial killer is murdering prostitutes and scalping them. The police are befuddled as killings of World War l veterans and amputees begins to spread in 1928 Berlin as well and Hitler is moving into the political scene and Berlin is wide open to all deviant behavior. Kerr will be missed.
During the past 5 months I've had opportunity to read about 10 books, some read about 50 pages and closed and seven read to conclusion. Life's too short to read more than 50 pages if it's a struggle and since no one's paying you to complete the book, close it and move on. You've got my permission.
The 7 that I read start to finish are a mix of fiction and non-fiction so let's get cracking...covers. Two by novelist Lou Berney are definite keepers. November Road won a bunch of awards and was included on many Best of 2018 lists as Berney introduces Frank Guidry, a lieutenant and fixer for New Orleans crime boss, Carlos Marcello. Guidry is sent to Dallas in October 1963 to take care of a small task, but after November 22 and the Crime of the Century-- the murder of JFK, Guidry sees that members of Marcello's gang are turning up dead and he will be next. He takes off for Vegas and an acquaintance who hates Marcello and might protect him, but he runs across a young woman with a broken down car, two daughters and a dog alongside the road. Guidry plots how he can use this situation to mask himself as a "family man" from his hunters by promising to get her a new car in Vegas so she can continue her escape to California from a bad marriage in Oklahoma. Love intercedes but the inevitable does as well.
An earlier novel of Berney's, The Long and Faraway Gone, another award winner including an EDGAR, introduces Wyatt, a private investigator in Vegas, who returns to his hometown, Oklahoma City, where 25 years earlier in 1986, he was the lone survivor of a movie house massacre in which six of his co-workers were shot by robbers. The case he's sent to investigate keeps pulling him back into the movie house murders while his path crosses a woman who lost her older sister to a kidnapper at the state fair that same year. Can their two investigations help them heal or is this another disaster about to happen.
Bruce Berger, a concert pianist and essayist in the style of John McPhee, Mark Twain and Joan Didion, offers his best in a collection titled A Desert Harvest: New and Selected Essays. These are some very short, a page or two, while others are 28-30 pages long. What unites them are Berger's writing style which is excellent and the location of them-- the American Southwest and the Mexican Baja region. These are not current, they are set 20 to 40 years ago and capture a place in time that was not as currently glitzy and tourist obsessed.
One of the best novels I've read in a long time is a debut effort and another EDGAR winner James A McLaughlin called Bearskin. Rice Moore has re-located from the Arizona deserts to Appalachia of western Virginia as he has escaped Mexican prison and the drug cartel that put him there. He now has a new name and a job as caretaker of a wilderness preserve repairing fences, cabins and counting species in the old growth forest. But bear carcasses in his forest introduce him to local law,poachers and local toughs, motorcycle gangs and some very bad people from his past as well as a university professor who was his predecessor at the reserve..
Black Klansman: A Memoir by Ron Stallworth is his story set in 1968 when he was hired as the first African American police officer in a very segregated Colorado Springs. He served his rookie time in records and property but came into his own when he was asked to go undercover into the Black Power community. He expanded his role in police work when he became involved with the Ku Klux Klan that was seeking to expand in Colorado Springs and especially at the military bases in the area. The book reads very matter-of-factly about his work which was sensationalized in the Spike Lee film last year. When asked about his role in creating the film, author Stallworth rolled his eyes, smiled and said nothing, since his book stands on its own.
If you ever read James Grady's debut novel Six Days of the Condor(1974) or saw the Pollack/Redford movie, you might have wondered what happened next to Malcolm aka Condor. Grady has answered your question with the recently published Condor: The Short Takes which collects 5 Condor stories previously published in fairly obscure journals and adds a lengthy novella about Russian entanglements with Condor.
And the final book I enjoyed in my five months of reading is the final book by author Philip Kerr, Metropolis, the 14th in his great Bernie Gunther series. The book also is the introduction to Bernie Gunther as he is taken from regular police work onto the Murder Wagon as a serial killer is murdering prostitutes and scalping them. The police are befuddled as killings of World War l veterans and amputees begins to spread in 1928 Berlin as well and Hitler is moving into the political scene and Berlin is wide open to all deviant behavior. Kerr will be missed.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
#13 Year-end wrap-up: Read Something Good in 2019
#13 Year-end wrap-up: Read Something Good in 2019
So the dark, cold days of December being a reason to drink apple cider and bourbon, eggnog with bourbon and pretty much anything else with bourbon is also a reason to Read, Read , Read.So what's been in front of my eyes since late summer? Several new books from a favorite author William Shaw are worthy of your reading time. "Sympathy for the Devil" is the fourth Breen & Tozer police procedural in a series that places these two police officers in Swingin'London of the mid-1960s, the times of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. It's 1969 and Brian Jones body is mysteriously found in his swimming pool and a prostitute, Julie Teenager, is found horribly murdered in her apartment elevator shaft. Cathal "Paddy" Breen is working the second case while his girlfriend, Helen Tozer, is in her ninth month of pregnancy and very frustrated that she can't be out doing police investigation, especially in the first case.The story captures the times most vividly as drugs, rock 'n roll lead to fame, money and sordid living.
A second book in a second series that Shaw has going is also a winner. "Salt Lane" is the first in series that presents Detective Sergeant Alex Cupidi transferred for cause from the Metropolitan Police in London to the southern coast near Kent. She was introduced in "The Birdwatcher" which is excellent but really comes into her own in this book. Her teen daughter is still not in love with rural England and Alex's strong-willed mother has moved down to help out. A drowning of a foreign man in a slurry tank is deemed a murder that sends Cupidi and her rookie constable Jill Ferriter into illegal, migrant laborers working in orchards and farms. A second murder resurrects some of Cupidi's past mistakes and liaisons to offer her help.
Another series that I enjoyed these past months are the three books by LA author Joe Ide that introduce and develop Isaiah Quintabe, a 26 year old black man living and working in East Long Beach. The three books--IQ, Righteous and Wrecked- are a unit as IQ works as a private detective in his community accepting ugly sweaters, live chickens, whatever his neighbors can pay to solve petty and big crimes and losses. IQ works by observing what others miss and by logically thinking through the facts and conjecture. He lost his older brother in a traffic accident and as the three novels develop, he investigates this as a murder while he gains a partner, Dodson, and a female friend. This is a series not to be missed by lovers of Sherlock Holmes and Watson..
Two standalone novels that I enjoyed are "The Dark Lake" by Sarah Bailey and "The Bomb Maker" by Thomas Perry. Bailey's debut is set in the Australian Outback about 4 hours from Sydney in a well-established agricultural community, Smithson. A body is discovered in a lake near the high school where a popular drama teacher debuted a play based on Romeo & Juliet.The body is the teacher, Rosalind Ryan, who was a very glamorous and successful student at the high school 10 years before.And investigating the murder is Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock, who was a classmate and admirer of Ryans back in the day. Suspects are plentiful both from the past and the present as DS Woodstock works through a very uncomfortable case.
Perry's "The Bomb Maker" is a stunner as an un-named man creates incredibly complicated mixes of chemicals to build huge bombs and plants them around Los Angeles. His first effort kills 7 of 14 members of the police bomb squad and he has many other locations, ways to hide, control and detonate bombs in the valley. Complicating his work is his unexplained alliance with an un-named terrorist cell that wants to attack LA. Combatting this is a free-lance investigator who is brought back by the LAPD to manage the bomb squad and forms more than a working alliance with a young woman who is on the squad. Characterization may suffer somewhat but if one wants very high octane adventure and massive information on making and dismantling bombs that can take down square miles, this is the book. Happy New Year! and Happy Reading.
So the dark, cold days of December being a reason to drink apple cider and bourbon, eggnog with bourbon and pretty much anything else with bourbon is also a reason to Read, Read , Read.So what's been in front of my eyes since late summer? Several new books from a favorite author William Shaw are worthy of your reading time. "Sympathy for the Devil" is the fourth Breen & Tozer police procedural in a series that places these two police officers in Swingin'London of the mid-1960s, the times of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. It's 1969 and Brian Jones body is mysteriously found in his swimming pool and a prostitute, Julie Teenager, is found horribly murdered in her apartment elevator shaft. Cathal "Paddy" Breen is working the second case while his girlfriend, Helen Tozer, is in her ninth month of pregnancy and very frustrated that she can't be out doing police investigation, especially in the first case.The story captures the times most vividly as drugs, rock 'n roll lead to fame, money and sordid living.
A second book in a second series that Shaw has going is also a winner. "Salt Lane" is the first in series that presents Detective Sergeant Alex Cupidi transferred for cause from the Metropolitan Police in London to the southern coast near Kent. She was introduced in "The Birdwatcher" which is excellent but really comes into her own in this book. Her teen daughter is still not in love with rural England and Alex's strong-willed mother has moved down to help out. A drowning of a foreign man in a slurry tank is deemed a murder that sends Cupidi and her rookie constable Jill Ferriter into illegal, migrant laborers working in orchards and farms. A second murder resurrects some of Cupidi's past mistakes and liaisons to offer her help.
Another series that I enjoyed these past months are the three books by LA author Joe Ide that introduce and develop Isaiah Quintabe, a 26 year old black man living and working in East Long Beach. The three books--IQ, Righteous and Wrecked- are a unit as IQ works as a private detective in his community accepting ugly sweaters, live chickens, whatever his neighbors can pay to solve petty and big crimes and losses. IQ works by observing what others miss and by logically thinking through the facts and conjecture. He lost his older brother in a traffic accident and as the three novels develop, he investigates this as a murder while he gains a partner, Dodson, and a female friend. This is a series not to be missed by lovers of Sherlock Holmes and Watson..
Two standalone novels that I enjoyed are "The Dark Lake" by Sarah Bailey and "The Bomb Maker" by Thomas Perry. Bailey's debut is set in the Australian Outback about 4 hours from Sydney in a well-established agricultural community, Smithson. A body is discovered in a lake near the high school where a popular drama teacher debuted a play based on Romeo & Juliet.The body is the teacher, Rosalind Ryan, who was a very glamorous and successful student at the high school 10 years before.And investigating the murder is Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock, who was a classmate and admirer of Ryans back in the day. Suspects are plentiful both from the past and the present as DS Woodstock works through a very uncomfortable case.
Perry's "The Bomb Maker" is a stunner as an un-named man creates incredibly complicated mixes of chemicals to build huge bombs and plants them around Los Angeles. His first effort kills 7 of 14 members of the police bomb squad and he has many other locations, ways to hide, control and detonate bombs in the valley. Complicating his work is his unexplained alliance with an un-named terrorist cell that wants to attack LA. Combatting this is a free-lance investigator who is brought back by the LAPD to manage the bomb squad and forms more than a working alliance with a young woman who is on the squad. Characterization may suffer somewhat but if one wants very high octane adventure and massive information on making and dismantling bombs that can take down square miles, this is the book. Happy New Year! and Happy Reading.
Saturday, August 18, 2018
#12 A Summer's Reading
#12 A Summer's Reading
One of the great rewards of retirement is plenty of time for reading, especially when and where one wants to read. It's been kind of toasty this June through August in northern Colorado so the afternoons are a great place, after morning chores and 2 hours of racquetball to settle in for some serious reading. This is the pattern which sets up well for a half-hour-no more, no less-resting of the eyes, nap. So what's been good?
In non-fiction, seriously read upstairs in the living room, I've enjoyed Ali: A Life, a mammoth recording of Muhammed Ali/ Cassius Marcellus Clay, jr.'s life from his ancestors to birth in 1942, through schooling in Louisville KY to the 1960 Rome Olympics, and professional career that should have ended in 1971 but went for 61 professional fights until a 1981 loss and a 1984 diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease and death in 2016. Eig researched Ali thoroughly talking to over 400 people around the Champion, and his book reads very smoothly covering the years and events of the Civil Rights era, the Vietnam war, Black Power movement and Elijah Muhammed and the Nation of Islam in Chicago,etc. But Ali was tough on women, his wives and many hangers on. That was a part of him that was less than successful.
Two books by Simon Winchester, a Brit now living in the US, were also very entertaining and challenging. The Surgeon of Crowthorne (also published as The Professor and the Madman) is the story of Dr. W C Minor, a surgeon in the US Army during the Civil War, who after leaving service a broken man, travels to London and murders a man, is sentenced to an insane asylum neighboring Windsor Castle and the Queen for life. End of story? No, his story in England crosses that of an Oxford professor who was instrumental in the creation of the multi-volume, multi-year project, the collection, verification and publishing of the Oxford English Dictionary. Their lives crossed as Minor contributed the largest collection of words and sources to the dictionary and he and Professor Murray became friends.
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World, his latest book, presents the fascinating tale of how life has been impacted by accuracy and precision. Beginning with the early years of the Industrial Revolution in 1776, Winchester introduces the leaky steam boiler and driven piston of Watts steam engine as being hopelessly inefficient. Another Englishman, Henry Wilkinson, modified his cannon-boring equipment to drill the first precision piston engine that really began the revolution. Winchester follows with the parallel histories of the establishment of the Rolls Royce Silver Phantom and Ford Model T as two sides of precision engineering and manufacturing diverging as to cost and comfort.Winchester also explores the development of GPS, smart phones, jet engine blades, the Hubble Space Telescope, the LIGO gravity wave apparatus and the future to humanity of Precision. This is very interesting stuff.
One of the great rewards of retirement is plenty of time for reading, especially when and where one wants to read. It's been kind of toasty this June through August in northern Colorado so the afternoons are a great place, after morning chores and 2 hours of racquetball to settle in for some serious reading. This is the pattern which sets up well for a half-hour-no more, no less-resting of the eyes, nap. So what's been good?
In non-fiction, seriously read upstairs in the living room, I've enjoyed Ali: A Life, a mammoth recording of Muhammed Ali/ Cassius Marcellus Clay, jr.'s life from his ancestors to birth in 1942, through schooling in Louisville KY to the 1960 Rome Olympics, and professional career that should have ended in 1971 but went for 61 professional fights until a 1981 loss and a 1984 diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease and death in 2016. Eig researched Ali thoroughly talking to over 400 people around the Champion, and his book reads very smoothly covering the years and events of the Civil Rights era, the Vietnam war, Black Power movement and Elijah Muhammed and the Nation of Islam in Chicago,etc. But Ali was tough on women, his wives and many hangers on. That was a part of him that was less than successful.
Two books by Simon Winchester, a Brit now living in the US, were also very entertaining and challenging. The Surgeon of Crowthorne (also published as The Professor and the Madman) is the story of Dr. W C Minor, a surgeon in the US Army during the Civil War, who after leaving service a broken man, travels to London and murders a man, is sentenced to an insane asylum neighboring Windsor Castle and the Queen for life. End of story? No, his story in England crosses that of an Oxford professor who was instrumental in the creation of the multi-volume, multi-year project, the collection, verification and publishing of the Oxford English Dictionary. Their lives crossed as Minor contributed the largest collection of words and sources to the dictionary and he and Professor Murray became friends.
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World, his latest book, presents the fascinating tale of how life has been impacted by accuracy and precision. Beginning with the early years of the Industrial Revolution in 1776, Winchester introduces the leaky steam boiler and driven piston of Watts steam engine as being hopelessly inefficient. Another Englishman, Henry Wilkinson, modified his cannon-boring equipment to drill the first precision piston engine that really began the revolution. Winchester follows with the parallel histories of the establishment of the Rolls Royce Silver Phantom and Ford Model T as two sides of precision engineering and manufacturing diverging as to cost and comfort.Winchester also explores the development of GPS, smart phones, jet engine blades, the Hubble Space Telescope, the LIGO gravity wave apparatus and the future to humanity of Precision. This is very interesting stuff.
Saturday, May 19, 2018
#11 Some New Old Books- May 2018
What's not to like when a reader discovers a new author who has been writing, maybe somewhat under the radar, for decades but deserves better. Four such authors that I have been reading the past 8 months are Brad Smith, a Canadian, and American authors Fred Zackel and Willy Vlautin. Smith, from the Great Lakes region of Ontario has had a considerable career as an author following stints as a railroad signal man, a rancher, carpenter, roofer- all honorable jobs that fill in when the writing is slow. His first three books showed great development in skill as his debut "One-Eyed Jacks" introduced a washed up boxer returning to the 1950s Toronto area. Tommy Cochrane wants to try to buy back his family's rural farm by fighting one, last match against a ranked heavyweight.Gals, gangsters, gamblers, Brylcream are everywhere as this easy plot smoothly unwinds.
Smith's second novel "All Hat" is a step up in smooth but entertaining plotting as 40 year old Ray Doaks returns to his small Ontario town after a two year jolt in prison for assaulting Sonny, the wealthy, thug son of an industrial billionaire who raped Ray's sister. Ray wants to be a roofer in his town but his path keeps crossing Sonny's who is trying to buy up all the farmland to build a racetrack-resort. Various race track figures are integral in a plot to steal a thoroughbred and race it in a super-grudge match. Smith's third novel, "Busted Flush" is a caper-fantasy as Dock Bass, a carpenter-realtor decides to chuck his profession and cheating wife to move to a ramshackle farmhouse in Gettysburg PA inherited from a previously unknown relative. His renovation project breaks through a wall to reveal a treasure trove of Civil War photography, previously unknown recording equipment, and maybe even the voice of A. Lincoln. Unscrupulous antique dealers and collectors test Dock's resolve to keep and use these priceless items.
Fred Zackel, something of a mystery man in the noir, crime writing field, is still productive after a stellar kickoff in 1978 with "Cocaine and Blue Eyes"."Fred Zackel's first novel reminds me of the young Dashiell Hammett's work, not because it is an imitation, but because it is not. It is a powerful and original book made from the lives and language of the people who live in San Francisco today." -- Mystery novelist Ross Macdonald, author of SLEEPING BEAUTY and THE UNDERGROUND MAN. Now, that's a pretty hard and heavy endorsement to live up to.But Zackel does as he introduces Michael Brennan, a private eye based in San Francisco who is hired for $1,000 to find the title girl who lives on a boat in the harbor but has gone missing. Brennan's search takes him from mid-winter cold and damp of the harbor into the mansions of the SF elite as a family saga leads into corruption and murder.
His second novel "Cinderella After Midnight" is equally noir, compelling and maybe even a bit better written as Brennen gets a straight-forward case to find a missing 15 year old girl who her mother suspects may have run from SF to LA to meet up with or been kidnapped by her ex-husband in a custody battle. But after visiting LA-- Brennan's casing and breaking into the father's condo occupies 5 pages and is masterful writing-- and deciding this is not where the girl is, Brennan spends the next 4 days in the depths of SF's Tenderloin, various corporate offices and the presence of a US Senator being lied to, blackmailed,shot at, and dynamited in search of this girl. Zackel has numerous newer novels to his name, but the two I have on my book stack for future reading are another SF novel, "Tough Town, Cold City" and a Las Vegas novel, "Johnny Casino."
The final author in today's review is not Unknown, but maybe is less widely known than he should be. Willy Vlautin has had 20 successful years as songwriter and vocalist with the Oregon-based band Richmond Fontaine and five published novels, 2 of which have been made into movies- The Motel Life and Lean on Pete. Vlautin's latest book, "Don't Skip Out on Me" is especially poignant. Horace Hooper, half Paiute, half Irish, lives with the Reeses in rural Nevada, helping Mr. Reese with his sheep ranch up in the mountains, but he wants more. Horace wants to be a boxer which the novel recounts as he moves from Golden Gloves matches in Arizona to training and working in Tucson to his professional career fighting in Mexico. The writing is beautiful and as a successful author can do, the reader becomes very connected to this young man and his struggle. ENJOY!
What's not to like when a reader discovers a new author who has been writing, maybe somewhat under the radar, for decades but deserves better. Four such authors that I have been reading the past 8 months are Brad Smith, a Canadian, and American authors Fred Zackel and Willy Vlautin. Smith, from the Great Lakes region of Ontario has had a considerable career as an author following stints as a railroad signal man, a rancher, carpenter, roofer- all honorable jobs that fill in when the writing is slow. His first three books showed great development in skill as his debut "One-Eyed Jacks" introduced a washed up boxer returning to the 1950s Toronto area. Tommy Cochrane wants to try to buy back his family's rural farm by fighting one, last match against a ranked heavyweight.Gals, gangsters, gamblers, Brylcream are everywhere as this easy plot smoothly unwinds.
Smith's second novel "All Hat" is a step up in smooth but entertaining plotting as 40 year old Ray Doaks returns to his small Ontario town after a two year jolt in prison for assaulting Sonny, the wealthy, thug son of an industrial billionaire who raped Ray's sister. Ray wants to be a roofer in his town but his path keeps crossing Sonny's who is trying to buy up all the farmland to build a racetrack-resort. Various race track figures are integral in a plot to steal a thoroughbred and race it in a super-grudge match. Smith's third novel, "Busted Flush" is a caper-fantasy as Dock Bass, a carpenter-realtor decides to chuck his profession and cheating wife to move to a ramshackle farmhouse in Gettysburg PA inherited from a previously unknown relative. His renovation project breaks through a wall to reveal a treasure trove of Civil War photography, previously unknown recording equipment, and maybe even the voice of A. Lincoln. Unscrupulous antique dealers and collectors test Dock's resolve to keep and use these priceless items.
Fred Zackel, something of a mystery man in the noir, crime writing field, is still productive after a stellar kickoff in 1978 with "Cocaine and Blue Eyes"."Fred Zackel's first novel reminds me of the young Dashiell Hammett's work, not because it is an imitation, but because it is not. It is a powerful and original book made from the lives and language of the people who live in San Francisco today." -- Mystery novelist Ross Macdonald, author of SLEEPING BEAUTY and THE UNDERGROUND MAN. Now, that's a pretty hard and heavy endorsement to live up to.But Zackel does as he introduces Michael Brennan, a private eye based in San Francisco who is hired for $1,000 to find the title girl who lives on a boat in the harbor but has gone missing. Brennan's search takes him from mid-winter cold and damp of the harbor into the mansions of the SF elite as a family saga leads into corruption and murder.
His second novel "Cinderella After Midnight" is equally noir, compelling and maybe even a bit better written as Brennen gets a straight-forward case to find a missing 15 year old girl who her mother suspects may have run from SF to LA to meet up with or been kidnapped by her ex-husband in a custody battle. But after visiting LA-- Brennan's casing and breaking into the father's condo occupies 5 pages and is masterful writing-- and deciding this is not where the girl is, Brennan spends the next 4 days in the depths of SF's Tenderloin, various corporate offices and the presence of a US Senator being lied to, blackmailed,shot at, and dynamited in search of this girl. Zackel has numerous newer novels to his name, but the two I have on my book stack for future reading are another SF novel, "Tough Town, Cold City" and a Las Vegas novel, "Johnny Casino."
The final author in today's review is not Unknown, but maybe is less widely known than he should be. Willy Vlautin has had 20 successful years as songwriter and vocalist with the Oregon-based band Richmond Fontaine and five published novels, 2 of which have been made into movies- The Motel Life and Lean on Pete. Vlautin's latest book, "Don't Skip Out on Me" is especially poignant. Horace Hooper, half Paiute, half Irish, lives with the Reeses in rural Nevada, helping Mr. Reese with his sheep ranch up in the mountains, but he wants more. Horace wants to be a boxer which the novel recounts as he moves from Golden Gloves matches in Arizona to training and working in Tucson to his professional career fighting in Mexico. The writing is beautiful and as a successful author can do, the reader becomes very connected to this young man and his struggle. ENJOY!
Thursday, September 7, 2017
#10- Onward 2017- Good Reading Posted Here!
#10- So with a lot of travel this summer-HHS67 50th Reunion, Slovak cousins in visiting, the ECLIPSE from Douglas WYO, trip to Missoula MT, grand-parenting, getting ready for Brad and Annie's wedding- it has been busy times. But a person must read as well as other more personal activities, so what have I been reading that might be worth your time and effort? Some economic history, Islamic studies,mysteries and James Sallis.
Unlike the empires of Rome, China, and Islam that expanded by force of arms, the United States expanded within its geographical boundaries and then looked and moved outwards via trade, invention and honoring the rights of law-sometimes. John Steele Gordon, a historian and editor at the "American Heritage" journal, presents this big story in "An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power". Beginning with the purely financial settling of Jamestown and business colonies along the Atlantic coast, through the Revolution and establishment of the national bank and various failures, this book is a reader-friendly overview of the people and personalities who established the US business empire up to the birth of the personal computer and 9/11/2001.
Robert J. Gordon continues this exploration into American economic history in his magisterial, meaning huge, "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: the US Standard of Living Since the Civil War" that focuses by comparison, copious statistical coverage, anecdote and contemporary press coverage to illustrate why Living Standards rose monumentally after the Civil War through the turn of the Century and again, around and after World War ll. It is not hard to argue for the benefits of civic plumbing, fresh water inside the house, central heating, the local train, bus, automobile and airplane travel compared to the benefits of Facebook and Twitter. Gordon makes the case that the economic growth period from 1970 going forward will be hampered by inequality, public and private debt, demographics and international development and competition. This read, while consuming a lot of time, is worth it for the edifice Gordon builds about the compounding benefits of the Second Industrial Revolution.
Another author I have been reading for the past two years is Bernard Lewis, emeritus professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Princeton U, who at 101 years of age is still writing and building on his 70+ years of research and scholarship and 100+ publications. His book "What Went Wrong?", published about the time of 9/11/2001 but not written as an explanation or investigation, is probably his best-known book. Lewis uses original essays, criticisms, history from many languages and cultures to illustrate the decline of Islamic culture in the 15th century from its eminence in the preceding 700 years in science, arts, and warfare. The book reviews the rise of western civilization in warfare, invention, seamanship and the withdrawal of Islamic civilization leading to isolation, in-fighting and blaming. Lewis reviews the differences in Society and Culture, Secularism and Justice, Equality and Modernism to explain how we have gotten to 9/11 and where we must go.
A couple of mysteries well-worth your reading effort are Tom Bouman's debut, and EDGAR award winner, "Dry Bones in the Valley" and William Shaw's latest, "The Birdwatcher." Bouman introduces Henry Farrell, a constable at the very lowest level of policing in his rural,northeast corner of Pennsylvania that is being heavily impacted by fracking and natural gas drilling. A reclusive,old man discovers a body minus an arm and eye hidden in the forest of his property. When Farrell's deputy is found murdered in his squad car, the forces of the county sheriff and state patrol intercede, driving Farrell to exhaustion and collapse as he investigates past entanglements, romances, meth cooking as neighbors no longer trust each other or the law.
William Shaw, creator of the Breen-Tozer novels set in the London of the Beatles, offers a stand-alone, "The Birdwatcher"that introduces William South, a policeman on the Kent coast whose real love is observing and noting bird behavior. This skill places him on a case as a neighbor and fellow birdwatcher is brutally murdered in a neighboring house. South is assigned to assist a new Detective Supervisor who has transferred from London and brings her teenage daughter with her. Both mother and daughter have issues that involve South who has his own history involving murder and his abusive father.
Any year that offers a new book by Phoenix author James Sallis is a good year and 2016 has "Willnot". this book is not a mystery though it starts off with a bang-- body parts are discovered in a shallow grave in an un-named rural, small town and local doctor Lamar Hale is called by the sheriff to assist in the investigation. The story then evolves into Hale's first person account of being a hospital doctor and surgeon in a very eccentric small town with many interesting medical patients, FBI investigators, possibly AWOL military snipers searching for each other and Hale's gay partner who is taken from the classroom and forced to become a principal. The language is beautiful and the characters are as well-drawn as any in literature. This book is to be enjoyed.
Unlike the empires of Rome, China, and Islam that expanded by force of arms, the United States expanded within its geographical boundaries and then looked and moved outwards via trade, invention and honoring the rights of law-sometimes. John Steele Gordon, a historian and editor at the "American Heritage" journal, presents this big story in "An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power". Beginning with the purely financial settling of Jamestown and business colonies along the Atlantic coast, through the Revolution and establishment of the national bank and various failures, this book is a reader-friendly overview of the people and personalities who established the US business empire up to the birth of the personal computer and 9/11/2001.
Robert J. Gordon continues this exploration into American economic history in his magisterial, meaning huge, "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: the US Standard of Living Since the Civil War" that focuses by comparison, copious statistical coverage, anecdote and contemporary press coverage to illustrate why Living Standards rose monumentally after the Civil War through the turn of the Century and again, around and after World War ll. It is not hard to argue for the benefits of civic plumbing, fresh water inside the house, central heating, the local train, bus, automobile and airplane travel compared to the benefits of Facebook and Twitter. Gordon makes the case that the economic growth period from 1970 going forward will be hampered by inequality, public and private debt, demographics and international development and competition. This read, while consuming a lot of time, is worth it for the edifice Gordon builds about the compounding benefits of the Second Industrial Revolution.
Another author I have been reading for the past two years is Bernard Lewis, emeritus professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Princeton U, who at 101 years of age is still writing and building on his 70+ years of research and scholarship and 100+ publications. His book "What Went Wrong?", published about the time of 9/11/2001 but not written as an explanation or investigation, is probably his best-known book. Lewis uses original essays, criticisms, history from many languages and cultures to illustrate the decline of Islamic culture in the 15th century from its eminence in the preceding 700 years in science, arts, and warfare. The book reviews the rise of western civilization in warfare, invention, seamanship and the withdrawal of Islamic civilization leading to isolation, in-fighting and blaming. Lewis reviews the differences in Society and Culture, Secularism and Justice, Equality and Modernism to explain how we have gotten to 9/11 and where we must go.
A couple of mysteries well-worth your reading effort are Tom Bouman's debut, and EDGAR award winner, "Dry Bones in the Valley" and William Shaw's latest, "The Birdwatcher." Bouman introduces Henry Farrell, a constable at the very lowest level of policing in his rural,northeast corner of Pennsylvania that is being heavily impacted by fracking and natural gas drilling. A reclusive,old man discovers a body minus an arm and eye hidden in the forest of his property. When Farrell's deputy is found murdered in his squad car, the forces of the county sheriff and state patrol intercede, driving Farrell to exhaustion and collapse as he investigates past entanglements, romances, meth cooking as neighbors no longer trust each other or the law.
William Shaw, creator of the Breen-Tozer novels set in the London of the Beatles, offers a stand-alone, "The Birdwatcher"that introduces William South, a policeman on the Kent coast whose real love is observing and noting bird behavior. This skill places him on a case as a neighbor and fellow birdwatcher is brutally murdered in a neighboring house. South is assigned to assist a new Detective Supervisor who has transferred from London and brings her teenage daughter with her. Both mother and daughter have issues that involve South who has his own history involving murder and his abusive father.
Any year that offers a new book by Phoenix author James Sallis is a good year and 2016 has "Willnot". this book is not a mystery though it starts off with a bang-- body parts are discovered in a shallow grave in an un-named rural, small town and local doctor Lamar Hale is called by the sheriff to assist in the investigation. The story then evolves into Hale's first person account of being a hospital doctor and surgeon in a very eccentric small town with many interesting medical patients, FBI investigators, possibly AWOL military snipers searching for each other and Hale's gay partner who is taken from the classroom and forced to become a principal. The language is beautiful and the characters are as well-drawn as any in literature. This book is to be enjoyed.
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