OK, it starts out a very compelling straightforward story of a lone "repairman" who like many a star of this genre in the past, just as Travis McGee bOK, it starts out a very compelling straightforward story of a lone "repairman" who like many a star of this genre in the past, just as Travis McGee by John McDonald, or Jack Reacher by Lee Child, and others, solves problems for people that "regular" law enforcement cannot. I love this stuff, and so I read it quite happily.
Then he zaps me by turning into part what it is as outlined above--and suddenly part horror.
I was about to throw the book aside, not liking horror at all, when I found myself experimentally reading a few more pages. OK, I ended up reading the whole thing, it's compellilng, dramatic, exciting, a page-turner, etc.,--but the fact remains I was also disgusted at many points throughout, and even might have had an unpleasant dream or two as a result. It'll make me wary going forward, because I have no idea what the "repairman" will be up to in further exploits--I made sure to read the first book in this series--but I do expect to open up another book soon.
I'll hope he stays with "normal" characterizations....more
I choose this of Peter's books to review because I read it last and the plot is more familiar to me. Aside from it being a good thriller, with a compeI choose this of Peter's books to review because I read it last and the plot is more familiar to me. Aside from it being a good thriller, with a compelling story--a true page-turner--it also has certain qualities that raise it up above a pure genre effort. There are character portraits, in which Mr. Abrahams illustrates personalities from the inside: we get to see the mind and thought process of a killer with little social skills and even less understanding of what's really going on around him--Abrahams presents his life of delusion amazingly--and we see a strangely similar thought process, heavily egomaniacal, from the "intelligent" mastermind of the crime. Both are lost in individual, hopeless interpretations. And so he makes you think, not only about the crime story as it's unfolding, with all the amazing twists and turns you like from such a book, but he makes you wonder a lot about people, how similarly lost we all might be. A lesson I get out of the reading experience--and his skills are apparent in his other books; I've read a few already--is that while we all have faults, what may well best separate us is our ability to observe those shortcomings and do something mature about them....more
He's a pretty extraordinary writer. This was his first book, and it's the book of a master, you think. And there are so many more. And what's interestHe's a pretty extraordinary writer. This was his first book, and it's the book of a master, you think. And there are so many more. And what's interesting is that he changes genre, or perhaps rather, motif. After writing this book and his next, Black Cross, both Nazi-themed, he completely left that world particularly because he didn't want to face the pressure of having to stay "on subject" for the rest of his career. The only sense in which this is a pity is that those two books, rich in possible history, or relation to well-known history, are particularly engrossing, at least for me. All the books that follow--I've read about half--are also quite thrilling, heavy, and purposeful beyond their suspenseful nature, in that they explore major topics of our times, such as racism ("The Quiet Game") but they fall more into the ever so slightly predictable category of "normal" thriller, that is, of books generally less about deeper matters than about holding our interest.
In any event, this particular book is riveting. It revisits a major event of World War II--the flight to Scotland of the Deputy Fuhrer of Germany, Rudolf Hess--and imagines a completely different twist to the story. Parallel to the search for resolution to the mystery are recreations of possible events and conversation involving, among others, Rudolf Hess himself and Adolf Hitler.
I'd be curious who Goodreads participants think might be equal to Greg Iles as a suspense writer with substance. Because one thing about books by these writers--it may have taken them a lifetime to write them all, but we can read them all in quite a bit less amount of time....more
I was so happy to get the latest from Lee. I gobbled it up in a day. The journey from Hope to Despair, two fictional towns in Colorado, to work out thI was so happy to get the latest from Lee. I gobbled it up in a day. The journey from Hope to Despair, two fictional towns in Colorado, to work out the intrigue of this book Jack Reacher traveled between them at least a dozen times. His brilliant deductive reasoning, amazing physical fighting skills, and perhaps to me most of all his trenchant stands for what he believes in, even though the people in front of whom he digs in are as likely to seem to have him beaten or murdered as listen to him. He doesn't care. He is curious, he has nothing better to do, and he will carry forward his mission, even though he doesn't quite have a grasp of what's going on, or see beyond a little past the present, if that. The author is very knowledgable about what he writes, in striking detail, about military maneuvers and practices, the way things are built, the meaning of peoples' actions. I particularly like the fact that as a former military policeman, well-schooled in questioning people, he can tell whether they're lying when he asks a question: he points out it has always been his observation that when you ask someone a question, if they look to their left, they're looking back in their actual memory. If they look to their right, they're looking to their imagination. Try it. See what you think....more
It is rare and satisfying to read a book by a member of the U.S. Senate that bespeaks an enormous intelligence, diplomacy and directness, befitting a It is rare and satisfying to read a book by a member of the U.S. Senate that bespeaks an enormous intelligence, diplomacy and directness, befitting a gentleman with no ax to grind, and which teaches so profoundly subject matter based on long experience and no long windedness.
I speak of this book by Senator Jim Webb, who took a quite unusual path into politics: he was a writer for 30 years. This is his ninth book. He was Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, has worked all over the world in the Marines, as a journalist, a movie maker, a consultant, and so on.
He brings all those years of inside military knowledge to these pages, and the book's a real eye-opener. He gives us real history, in contrast to many stereotypes we've grown up with. He tells us how deeply trained and knowledgeable soldiers are, how Russian spies created disaster for us in the Korean theater, how Douglas MacArthur was not so much an insubordinate as a brilliant commander who ran up against an insane bureaucracy back in Washington, which quite clearly is the case today as well, regarding certain so-called "insubordinate" generals and the hell-bent-for-war administration of Bush and Cheney.
There's a lot of common sense discussion of problems we face today. For example, as important as Global Warming is, Senator Webb says the problem can't be given the full attention it needs until more essential needs are met by a growing number of Americans, for example, food clothing and housing, which current economic crises are exacerbating: without fed bellies, a roof over one's head, it is impossible to address further out issues.
He also in a chapter on our humongous prison system, which boasts the largest percentage of its citizens incarcerated in the world, Webb chronicles the huge population there for minor drug crimes, who are mainly Black, and illustrates how this creates a permanent, usually not-able-to-vote underclass who can't find good jobs when they get out, and the volatility this brings about, how it bodes little well for a reconciliation within society. And he laments how hard it is to deal with this issue, because politians fear to touch it, because they would have to be bold and declare we should decriminalize marijuana, for example, and then they run the reality of being dubbed "soft on crime" which could cripple them politically. Note, in this long election campaign, I can't remember a single time our prison population is brought up in the debates.
Webb tellingly gives us a history of the Democratic Party moving away from its most notable support of unions, of the average American worker, which debate with the Republicans over the past few decades has morphed instead into "cultural issues" which most of the civilized world would never relegate to public debate: gay marriage, flag lapel pins; nonsense. As a result, many blue collar workers have been led astray, as it were, into Republican hands, and Webb urges the Democrats refocus on what made them strong.
Well, it's up to Senator Obama to listen. Webb's been talked about as a running mate. Maybe he could have a high position in the cabinet. One thing's for sure: Webb should sit down with Obama and highlight the important parts of this book. I hope Obama gives him a good read....more
As William Vollmann lets us know in a short passage in this book, he is aware of the reputation he has for being a difficult read. I've always found sAs William Vollmann lets us know in a short passage in this book, he is aware of the reputation he has for being a difficult read. I've always found some of his work impenetrable. But I was intrigued by his carrying on with his style, knowing many people might not be able to be reached. Because he is above all himself in his writing, and I like the style. I find that in his non-fiction he is much more follow-able. We look into a man reflecting after having compiled all his notes, as he puts into order the manuscript for publication. I imagine him sitting in a room, a quiet place, with recordings of his interviews and field notes--he traveled to far-flung places all over the world and, in this book, interviewed people on the subject of poverty: why are you poor? Who is to blame? Can you get out of this situation?--and he takes us through his thoughts, his self-doubts, his scenery painting, and it's altogether a majestic experience, on a densely private level, of a writer at work.
The people he picks, and pays for their time, to allow him to spend some hours or some days with him, yields up some terribly poignant stories. He speaks with the smelly, the toothless, the mauled-by-time beggars, people sleeping under bridges, drunks, criminals, just very very poor people. Most don't see a way out, many are trapped, it seems, in a culture that keeps them just at the level of perpetual poverty and which makes it almost insurmountable. I say insurmountable because to get out of the pictures of poverty these people paint, they'd have to use an imagination they don't seem to possess, but which, I imagine, could take a hold of them some day...perhaps after meeting an unusual visitor, such as Mr. Vollmann, who takes the time to listen, to visit isolated poor colonies, as it were?
One of the most poignant, or sad, stories, concerns a way out-of-the-way place in Kazakhstan, the former Soviet republic, where a big oil company has a huge plant and is polluting the whole town like crazy. I mean a lot of people who depend on this mega-business for their livelihood are suffering, their families are suffering, from chocking poisonous air, there are illnesses everywhere. But. There's not the slightest legal action or organized protest to the distinct possibilities their very lives are being shortened by the careless production. Instead there's a fierce protectionism and fear paid to the giant Corporation. Whether Corporation goons make sure of it, or the incentive of keeping a job takes care of any possible desire to remedy the foul air, Vollmann, upon meeting many of the workers and getting them to open up and promise to tell him "all" during their next meeting, when he shows up for that next meeting, the people who promise him they'll talk either don't show up or have changed their personalities completely so that there's not a chance they have anything to say anymore.
Because of the genre I can't give this more than four stars, but it's an excellent rapidly unfolding tale in which ultimate justice is anticipated, thBecause of the genre I can't give this more than four stars, but it's an excellent rapidly unfolding tale in which ultimate justice is anticipated, the hero detectives face a lot of difficulty going towards that end, but you read as fast as you can because you know that great moment is coming and you want to be part of it, exult in it, as we do so rarely in real life....more
This book gives one a quite sober look at the sexual mores of our times, and at the same time is a ridiculous romp of sexual improbability throughout This book gives one a quite sober look at the sexual mores of our times, and at the same time is a ridiculous romp of sexual improbability throughout the towns of Racine, Wisconsin, New York City, a mining town in Minnesota, somewhere in India, and Llasa, Tibet. This book is the rawest experience with sexual explicitness, I believe, one could possibly read. If one would guess which book of all books might have been banned, one would guess this one (and of course it was).
Yet the implausible scenes it gives us, strangely, to the average man, are weirdly plausible. That is why this fiction works: I know it might strike some if not most people as strange, but I truly believe that if you think about it the average man would not think it at all unreasonable that a full gynecological exam would occur in the rest room of a Greenwich Village bar, as it does in this book, or that in every single scene in which a man appears with Candy no matter what the profession of the man, whether professor, doctor, mystic or whomever, sex is the ulterior motive of all their interactions.
Candy is presented as an innocent, the original bleeding heart liberal, whose love and compassion for a hunchback on Grove Street, for example, is heartwarming but at the same time ridiculous because the guy's certifiably nuts but because of her broad loving arms and open-mindedness she cannot perceive even his inability to speak coherent English. Later, in bed, when he starts beating her with a hangar, she transforms the scene into a "just punishment" for the sins of all mankind towards the unfortunate deformed.
Terry Southern's extraordinary clever and creative, funny as hell, yet as I said there's a deep moral tale hidden behind the, well, perfect behind, often exposed in telling detail, of the heroine of this book, Miss Candy Christian....more
What am I supposed to say about Rumi. I started a poem once in his honor. It began:
The night is so long. And yet there is the quiver of the day. Where aWhat am I supposed to say about Rumi. I started a poem once in his honor. It began:
The night is so long. And yet there is the quiver of the day. Where are you when you are not?
Well anyway, his stories and poems are fire-full and meaningful. He's a patient story teller and a mystic writer. His similes and parallels all meld.
His writing I believe is in its 800th year, or will be 800 before long. He's entertaining on a one-page read or when you have more time. Coleman Barks translation can't go wrong....more
It's good I found Ian Rankin, as I love Scotland and want to learn more about it from the insider's perspective, thank you for that, and also because It's good I found Ian Rankin, as I love Scotland and want to learn more about it from the insider's perspective, thank you for that, and also because I'm running low going through my favorite mystery writers and need new discoveries, thank you very much Edgar Award winners list, from which I culled some names and found Mr. Rankin.
This story, his first in the Rebus series, is a twisted unlikely tale as many a serial killer story turns out to be, until, I suppose, you get to know some serial killers. What the hell's a normal serial killer supposed to be like? Well, I suppose what I found unlikely was the intelligence and the training and the long-range plotting of this particular killer. I mean most killers, like most politicians, are stupid--smart as a whip and clever in certain ways--but stupid in the sense that they don't see better than what they do. And the problem with a lot of detective stories is that the writers are smarter than the average killer or politician but can't seem to not let it show, so they have to invent these characters who wouldn't be that smart in real life. Do I make sense?
OK, but a well written, good moving detective story also....more
No, that's another of Mr. Southern's masterpieces, one I've yet to re-read after all these years. (It's on order. I speak, of"Good Grief, it's Daddy!"
No, that's another of Mr. Southern's masterpieces, one I've yet to re-read after all these years. (It's on order. I speak, of course, of "Candy.")
But nevertheless, here, the Magic Christian. It's a very rare book, in that it's virtually unique, but addresses an issue that might be on many of our minds: what totally unique and cool thing would you do with some extra billions of dollars?
Aren't we a little bored seeing how all the billionaires in our midst conduct themselves, so traditionally, so usurpingly, so without imagination? Great. Buildings. Stocks. Stores. Retail. Charity. We know. We know.
But this guy. Guy Grand. A grand guy. He's an "eccentric" billionaire. He does things so weird, so cool, well, that's what the book's about. Southern chronicles Mr. Grand's exotic adventures, from "overtipping" a hot dog salesman some $499.80 on a 20-cent hot dog purchase, to putting a million dollars in one-hundred dollar bills into a vat admixtured with 500 pounds equally of cow shit, urine and blood along with a sign "Free $ Here." What would you do? Dive in?
And he pays TV actors a million bucks to--in the middle of a dramatic scene on live primetime TV drama to suddenly look into the camera and say a line like, "I cannot go on. I will vomit if I say another word of these worthless treacle! I cannot! I must walk off!" Leaving stagehands, fellow actors, directors and big-time moneybackers horrified.
This is how Guy Grand, a grand guy, gets his chortles. He lives--when he's in town which isn't too often--with two doting aunts on the upper east side--and seems to have a great time plotting against the establishment, the status quo, and everything normal.
Hazel Motes thinks what he thinks and no one much can influence him one way or another; he hardly hears anyone else. He seems to move on his own incliHazel Motes thinks what he thinks and no one much can influence him one way or another; he hardly hears anyone else. He seems to move on his own inclinations. He arrives in a small southern town and starts preaching his "Church without Christ". He becomes obsessed with an apparently blind preacher and his daughter, and at the same time another young man, having lived in the town and working at the local zoo but who has not had any friends for the two months he's been there, becomes obsessed with Hazel, follows him around and tries to be his friend. All these people end up mixing in strange ways, except not perhaps strange to any of them. They come out of some short stories that appear late in Flannery O'Connor's career and are further developed here in this novel.
These characters, as wonderfully as they're portrayed, are never known or knowable; they're essentially mysterious, but we keep following their stories because, while they appear to be train wrecks in the making left and right, they're also human, are portrayed deeply as such, and we want to read more about them....more
Just what you'd come to expect from Michael Connelly--intelligent detection, an insistence on the part of his hero on the facts leading where they wilJust what you'd come to expect from Michael Connelly--intelligent detection, an insistence on the part of his hero on the facts leading where they will, plausible plots. The detective, Harry Bosch, is, alas, human, and the reader gets to see and sadly realize how certain bad turns might, repeat might, have been prevented had the investigator, already brilliant, had he been even more smart, more aware. Looking back, the reader is allowed to see, to imagine, how things might have been improved. That exposure of very human elements, part of what makes his books so good. Very little caricature, on the whole no absurd coincidence, and as I've said elsewhere, a very low implausibility factor....more
It's been a few years since his last publication, I've read both David's books at least twice, and am somewhat impatiently waiting for his next. He's It's been a few years since his last publication, I've read both David's books at least twice, and am somewhat impatiently waiting for his next. He's a bright young writer of enormous talent. He takes every word--every sentence--as a great challenge. He doesn't want to be mediocre for one moment. He demands his prose is infused with--here's a word he might use--the stupendous.
Each of his characters are remarkable. On the one hand they seem absurd caricatures but on the other, many are presented as considerably more noteworthy in their inner lives--more profound, more dramatic--than the average characters we seem to see on an everyday basis, inside and outside of books.
If one theme drives all of his writing it is man's confrontation with that "great opportunity" in life--it comes to all of us at least once, he seems sure to be saying--and it's what we do with that moment that is crucial, that defines us for evermore. Even if the action we need to take at such a given moment is completely boggled, wrong, insanely misplaced, the moment calls for action, big action, and in the end the taking of it is what might well propel us to "the next level" of being that we all strive for.
I owe at least myself an explanation of why I didn't place five stars next to this book; I seem pretty liberal with that assignation. I think it's because I prefer the less absurd--although I can't really fault him for this presentation. At all....more
I wondered going through some of the stories here, might we not learn more about the southern character today from reading Ms. O'Connor's stories thanI wondered going through some of the stories here, might we not learn more about the southern character today from reading Ms. O'Connor's stories than we would reading the newspapers, hearing peoples' soundbites on TV--even though her stories were written half a century ago?
You see we don't see political correctness, or hardly, on the part of her characters. In the south, even after integration on public transportation, for example, if a large cross-section of fairly well-to-do white women were on a bus, and during that particular segment of the ride there was no other racial representation on board, Ms. O'Connor presents her busriders openly discussing the rights "of the niggers" and what one might expect of them, etc. In other words, what many decades of upbringing inculcated in someone just doesn't fly away with new legislation, with turning points in history.
And one wonders, with the Confederate flag still proudly flying down in parts of the south, with a lot of people either themselves or with their parents having lived during years of decided segregation, how removed are those gut preferences, those conditioned thoughts, from one's consciousness as one lives one's daily life?
And I must say the portrayal of "colored" farm workers or hired hands--not the middle class or up and coming business entrepreneur in the Black community--is utterly fascinating. Her portrayal has such workers remarkably obsequious, overly flattering and complementary, not uppity or filled with rage. One wonders--one suspects--there's a bit of acting going on here, that they as habit ingratiate themselves with such bromides--but it all stands in such contrast to the "angry Black man" and the "draw your line in the sand" civil rights protester many of us came to be introduced to as seemingly representative of the new and liberated Black community.
This aspect is only one dimension of Flannery's writings. She creates it all, tells beautiful stories, has a lot of odd characters, charlatans, scam artists, soul-less opportunists, innocents, all of them somehow victims, yet also people who could well alter their own fate if they would only be nudged--or nudge themselves--in that direction.
Her body of work is relatively small--but golden....more
Everyone aught to become more familiar with one's perceived enemies than one generally is wont to be. I like delving into the stories of people I'm prEveryone aught to become more familiar with one's perceived enemies than one generally is wont to be. I like delving into the stories of people I'm pretty sure I despise, for example, Nixon or Bush or others, with the idea that to have an open mind it's good to really see whether your distaste for someone or their thinking is a product of other peoples' influence or superficial.
What did I learn? Well Cheney is formidable. Unlike a lot of "conservatives" who dabble in their beliefs, one might say, Cheney plunges in full-bore, as a true believer. He seems to have no sense of compromise, is razor-sharp in his attacks, and sets things up pretty much the way he wants to. He stays in the background yet wields fierce power. He can play a nicey-nicey game but you can see it's repugnant to him.
His fault, as far as I can judge, is that he believes, to a grave fault, that secrecy is essential to the conduct of policy, that it is better to withhold than to give, that all people are not fully worthy of understanding. He's locked in, acts as if he's sure he's right, is an extraordinarily reticent person in social settings, is an ol'time boy who has no genuine compassion for average individuals. Also, sadly, like a lot of "leaders" he has no understanding of what America really is, a country which to be true to its principles, must remain vulnerable to open speech, and must prize the sanctity of life. Though he's probably a church-goer, he seems to have no religion as regards being kind to anyone he perceives as an enemy. Once you're on his blacklist, whether you're an alleged terrorist or a liberal thinker, you're marked, plain and simple, as worthy only of utter disdain.
If the author were to ask me what I thought of his biography, in the writing of which he was granted unprecedented access to the Vice-President, I would say he was too glad to get that face-time, and shied away from trying to pin him down on his understanding--or really lack of understanding--of basic precepts of this country's founding. Too much of an apologist, I'm sorry to say.
But he does provide insight into Cheney's thinking, into less-known aspects of his career....more
This is a stand-alone thriller from Michael Connelly--not part of his Harry Bosch series. It was a fast-paced urgent page-turner. Very well constructeThis is a stand-alone thriller from Michael Connelly--not part of his Harry Bosch series. It was a fast-paced urgent page-turner. Very well constructed story, building action and tension.
Connelly faced the challenge here of centering on two main protagonists who were both criminals, thus running the risk of a reader's lack of empathy for his lack of "good" or "heroic" main characters. But he kept things moving and backed the story with enough human-interest drama and personal detail to enable one to stay tuned....more
The world we live in is a funny but dangerous place. You can get by thinking wholly the wrong thing, because the media can present things in a stark bThe world we live in is a funny but dangerous place. You can get by thinking wholly the wrong thing, because the media can present things in a stark but somewhat fluffy way. You're never hit too truly hard with things, there's a sort of buffer that is in our lives. It's a buffer that comes out of our self-proclaimed necessity to have real perilous thought at a distance, I think. I mean we couldn't survive if we had to have the rawness of pain and reality constantly soaking into our soul. So we develop personalities that make light of or otherwise deal with things--and in part we "create" the media and politicians and scene around us that suits this need. We have artists out in artists' fields--not as mainstream politicians, though those of us with a semblance of intelligence know that no good man could really be elected president--because, for some reason, we just can't have it. Maybe because the "artist as leader" would be too much like Jean of Arc and we'd have to seriously contemplate sacrificing our selves too often for the common good. So let's keep politics playful--or superficial.
Or some such. As a result, there's a fantastic difference between reality and what is presented as reality, or what we will accept from our politicians. We know for example that whoever's elected this next November, nothing truly substantial will be done to alter our profound inequities. Probably not, anyway.
This book goes over so many specific areas of life--tax law, health care, education policy, job and housing issues, foreign policy--and the point of each of the experts that writes about these issues is similar: we've gotten so far off the straight and narrow on these issues, there are such stark inequities, yet solutions do exist, and here they are...
One is heartened reading through the specifics, that our problems are soluable.
And the book turns my eye again back to the politics I have shunned my whole adult life--in favor of music, poetry, art, philosophy, relationships, i.e. the private and soulful, or attempted meaningful life. I turned my back on "the system" because I had suffered the lies of Watergate and Vietnam --the "establishment" was anathema to me--but now I see that while my priorities are still away from the macro and very much still personal, it is worth being aware of what our politicians face. ...more
This is a little scary. Jim Knipfel is an amazing writer. He's written about kooky things in a weekly column (now finished) in NY Press, for several yThis is a little scary. Jim Knipfel is an amazing writer. He's written about kooky things in a weekly column (now finished) in NY Press, for several years, and the protagonist in this first novel of his is a grizzled newspaperman who works the "kook beat" for a major NY metropolitan daily. This guy's even more of a misanthrope than the real author. Or perhaps better put: unlike Jim, this fictional writer is much too much wrapped up in his off-the-wall characters. He believes or thinks too much of what they say is possible. It's more than lending an empathetic ear. To follow the crazies, the paranoids, deep into their delusional testimonies is to risk getting lost...
Jim paints an all-too-accurate picture of modern society, which is sort of in his periphery...the world of young cookie-cutter journalists, the corporate world, the world of authority, the "official" world that goes on all around him.
The only reason I didn't give five stars, which I usually do when I love a book or think the writer is fantastic, is that so deeply does Jim go into many of the characters' off-the-wall ravings that it became difficult to maintain the stamina to stick with those bizarre twisted nonsensical tales; to my perhaps too impatient soul, it became a bit tedious.
Isn't a main reason so many reviewers give less than sterling reviews a reflection of their own (our own) shortcomings as readers? I remember, especially years ago, whenever coming across a difficult or impossible-to-understand passage by what was obviously a great author, I'd tend to blame the author, for writing a "bad patch"--never myself, for just not being intelligent enough, or quiet enough, receptive enough, to read what he was saying......more
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