Thinking Out Loud: Our Wives Under the Sea

 

Well, this one is strange. I love the premise, and the writing is excellent, but it turns out that the book is mediocre to the point that I only rate it three stars out of five. Our Wives Under the Sea is only 223 pages long, but it still took a concentrated push to get me through the last 50 pages or so. 

The premise: A marine biologist leaves on what should be a routine expedition only to find herself and two crew members trapped for five months on the ocean floor in a malfunctioning submarine. When she is finally able to return to her wife, it quickly becomes apparent that the scientist is suffering from a severe case of PTS. But it's when the physical changes start to take place, that her wife reluctantly starts looking for real answers - answers that will frustrate and terrify her. 

Great hook, right?

And the writing is just excellent, right from this opening sentence:

The deep sea is a haunted house: a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness.

This perfectly places the reader in the setting, and is spookily intriguing enough to get them to keep reading.

So why then did I find it to be an overall mediocre novel? It may be because of my personal quirk about never feeling quite satisfied by open-ended novels, the kind that leave you screaming for answers and explanations even after you've turned the final page. That's the way I felt after turning page 223 of Our Wives Under the Sea. Julia Armfield, however, is such a good writer that I'm going to try to find her first novel in hopes that it didn't end quite as foggily as this one did. 

This, I think, is the British cover (Armfield is English), and I much prefer it to the US cover:

Thinking Out Loud: The Graduate

 Most movie fans are familiar with The Graduate, the movie that I suppose made Dustin Hoffman into the major star he is/was. I saw it in the theater when it was first released and remember being taken with it, but until now I had not read the 1963 novel by Charles Webb that is the basis of that film.

To the best of my recollection, the movie pretty closely follows the plot of Webb's novel, but my impression of the main characters as portrayed in the novel is very different from the one I got from the movie. The movie version of "Ben" came across to me as a still-innocent and somewhat naive recent college graduate who never stands a chance against the older woman who seduces him. "Elaine," the older woman's daughter came across in the film version as an impetuous young woman who finally recognized the spark that existed between her and Ben. Because I was just a little bit younger than the two characters, I found it easy to identify with them and enjoy the premise of the movie.

But the novel strikes me completely differently. I find "Ben" to be an almost-dangerous sociopath in the book, and "Elaine" a fool who can be easily swayed on major life decisions by whatever the last person she speaks to about them thinks. The two are a terrible mix, and between them they manage to harm numerous side characters along the way, including their own parents. Oddly enough, I remember rooting for Ben during the entire movie - but rooted for Mr. & Mrs. Robinson during most of the novel. Mrs. Robinson was clearly the instigator in all that followed, but she did her best to control the dumpster fire she created. Ben, on the other hand, was a walking can of gasoline.

Webb's writing is very conversational and does a great job of illustrating just how deeply psychotic Ben is, and how passive Elaine is. It's an easy read, if you're interested - and now I'm curious enough to watch the movie again to see if I react to it the same way. 

Thinking Out Loud: Our Country Friends

 

Our Country Friends is my second experience with a Gary Shteyngart novel, and I suppose the good news is that I actually finished this one. So needless to say, I won't be recommending this one to others without including a lot of qualifying comments:

What drew my interest to Our Country Friends is that it is one of the first novels I've encountered set in 2020 and focusing on all the confusion of that year as the world tried to figure out how to cope with a new virus that eventually came to be called COVID-19. In this case, a handful of lifelong friends and friends-of-friends gather in upper New York state where they hope to keep themselves safe by self-quarantining there as a group during the worst of it. What they fail to take into account is just how closed in a little world they are creating for themselves. It is no surprise to the reader that little cracks in past relationships soon widen into major breaks. Within weeks, new sexual pairings have come and gone, petty jealousies have been exposed, and none of the friends will ever see each other the same again.

I've come to the conclusion that a Gary Shteyngart novel is unlikely to work for me because I find it so difficult to be around his characters long enough to finish one of them. The core characters in this one are mainly first-generation Americans whose parents are from either Russia or India (Shteyngart himself came to America from Russia as a seven-year-old). Even though I am always curious about the immigrant experience, Shteyngart's characters are so obsessed by their experiences that it makes them seem weak and superficial - and even worse, boring. The only character that kept me at all entertained was the little Korean girl who had been adopted by the host couple. She is a gem of a character.

Gary Shteyngart is a definite darling of the critics (especially those on the East Coast), so I must be missing something. I just wish I could figure out what that is. 

Thinking Out Loud: One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

According to Olivia Hawker, One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow came to her very easily. Once she gathered up various elements of her own family history, the plot and the characters fell right into place, and even the actual writing was not that much of a chore. She still says that this 2019 novel is the "easiest" one she has ever written.

I don't know about all of that, but I can tell you that I was almost immediately taken by the setting (two 1876 Wyoming homesteads) and the tragedy/crime that bound two families so close together whether they wanted to be bound that tightly or not. After the two families find themselves both lacking an adult male as winter approaches, they have little choice but to move in together and share what they have. Any other decision will likely result in the deaths of several children and most of the livestock owned by the families.

Really, the Bemises and the Webbers were bound together long before the two women put aside their rage and pride long enough to consider what was best for the children. Ernest Bemis made certain of that when he shot and killed Substance Webber after catching the man and Cora Bemis in a more-than-compromising position. Ernest almost immediately rode the 20 miles into town to turn himself in to the sheriff, and after his trial was sentenced to two years in jail. Suddenly the women are dependent on the seventeen-year-old Clyde Webber and the sixteen-year-old Beulah Bemis to do all of the farm labor their husbands had previously done if either family were to survive the approaching winter.

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow is a well written piece of historical fiction, one that gives a clear picture of how precarious life was in that part of the American West in 1876. It features two strong women trying to do what's best for their own families despite what has so recently torn both families apart. It is part western, part love story, and part character study. I give this one four out of five stars.

(I'm reading at a slower pace these days, and I'm finding that slowing myself down has made me look at novels in a slightly different way. I'm catching more details and nuances now, I think, than I have for a while - and I'm enjoying that.)

Fight Night: Thinking Out Loud

 I'm stretched a little thinly these days, but even though this won't be anything like a formal review, I want to "think out loud" a little about a book that I recently enjoyed a whole lot, Fight Night by Miriam Toews. 

The novel is about three generations of very unique women living under the same roof. The grandmother is elderly and not doing very well physically; the mother is pregnant and own her own since her husband walked out on the family; and the nine-year-old granddaughter is pretty much a little genius even though she's currently expelled from school.

For me, what made this book so special is the total bonding between the little girl and her grandmother. The fun comes from the fact that each of them believes she is the guardian and almost-sole caretaker of the other. There's a lot of watchfulness and education going in both directions, and much of it is laugh-out-loud funny - when it's not putting a tear in your eye.

Even the unborn child (called "Gord" by the family due to how big the mother is in her late term pregnancy) becomes a minor character that the little girl speaks to in her head and watches out for. 

That's it. If this little bit of info appeals to you, you really need to get your hands on this one. It's the one book that keeps popping back into my head so far from this year's reading. 

In Which I Get Interviewed on The Big Show

 My life has been marked by two constants over the decades: a love of books and reading, and an appreciation for roots music. I define roots music as that made by the pioneers and first generation singers of a particular genre, be that country music, bluegrass music, the blues, rock and roll, etc. But because music genres can evolve so rapidly over the years - even to the point of becoming mere shadows of the original sound - I've always had a tendency to hold on to the old stuff when I find it. And after 60 years of collecting, that means I have a music library that includes 78s, 45s, LPs, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs, and self-recorded video and audio performances along with thousands of digital recordings. 

That's the other side of my life that has occasionally bled over to my posts here at Book Chase. I try to keep that to a minimum, but sometimes I can't help myself. This is one of those times.

I recently sat down with Andy Gallo and Jim Sloan as a guest on their music-related podcast called "The Big Show" to talk about my lifetime love for music of this sort and my meager efforts to help keep the music alive over the years. We get into things like what sparked my regard for the music, the internet radio station I helped run for several years, and all the video recordings I still make and share on the internet.

I finally got the courage to listen to it myself, and I hope one or two of you might find it interesting since I've been neglecting Book Chase so badly. It explains where a lot of my energy is going these days.

August Reading: Quantity Was There, Quality Not So Much

 

While I did manage to read 11 books during August, a good part of my reading seemed to go more sluggishly than usual. I'm not sure if I simply made some poor choices this month or if it's more a problem with my general attitude. Whichever it was, I'm really looking forward to a fresh start in September...although that's the peak of hurricane season in this part of the country, so it could turn out to be an extra-interesting month. Looking at the ones I finished in August, I'm a bit surprised to see that six are novels and five are nonfiction because I don't usually read nonfiction in that kind of ratio to fiction.

1. The Good Daughters - Joyce Maynard - Two very different families share a huge secret for over 50 years
2. We Came, We Saw, We Left - Charles Wheelan - man travels around the world for 9 months with wife & 3 teens - Nonfiction
3. To Hell with Honor - Larry Sklenar - Brilliant explanation of what happened at The Little Big Horn and who was responsible
4. Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old - Steven Petrow - writer vows to practice what he learned from watching his parents age
5. The Woman in the Library - Sulari Gentill - Disappointing mystery using novel-inside-a-novel structure that is stupefyingly formulaic 
6. Real Tigers - Mick Herron - #4 in the terrific Slough House series 
7. A String of Beads - Thomas Perry - Jane Whitefield #8 - Jane hides he childhood Seneca best friend from cops and killers 
8. Bridge of Spies - Giles Whittell - Account of U-2 pilot Gary Powers, his capture by Russia and exchange for Russian spy
9. Blood Safari - Deon Meyer - Second novel in Meyer's Lemmer series about a South African bodyguard
10. In a Dry Season - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #10 - a case going back to World War II; Banks meets DS Annie Cabbot
11. Packing My Library - Alberto Manguel - Argentinian author's 10 essays and 10 "digressions" on packing away his personal library

I think I'm a little disappointed with this lot because even some of my favorite crime writers didn't impress me all that much this month. I read four of my favorites this month: Mick Herron, Deon Meyer, Thomas Perry, and Peter Robinson. Of the four books of theirs, the only one that stands out to me as representative of their best work is Herron's Real Tigers, and based on that one's not-so-promising plot summary I was surprised by how much I liked it. I absolutely loved the first third of Meyer's Blood Safari, but it became a routine thriller after one of the book's two main characters was sent to hospital in a coma - where she stayed for almost the rest of the book. I "liked" Perry's A String of Beads right up until I realized that Jane Whitefield was going to be using the same evasion techniques that she uses in all of the novels featuring her and that she was simply teaching them to a new client. This is only the second Whitefield novel I've read, though, so maybe that criticism is premature. As for Robinson's 10th Inspector Banks novel, it is built around one of the things I like least in fiction: an author "telling" what happened rather than "showing it." In In a Dry Season, Robinson flashes back and forth via an unpublished manuscript that fills in most of the holes from the WWII portion of the novel. And that goes on for about ninety percent of the novel. It became tedious because the "manuscript author" wrote so passionlessly.

And then there were two 2-star books this month: the robotically written The Woman in the Library and the way-over-my-head Packing My Library. I had high hopes for the latter, even to purchasing an e-book copy of it, but it was a real slog for me, and I'm still not sure what I read...or why. The Woman in the Library is so formulaic that it could have been written by a software program. Before that one is over, just about every main character in the novel has been featured in the role of red herring. It just got silly sometimes.

My favorite book of the month turned out to be To Hell with Honor by Larry Sklenar, an in-depth study of exactly what must have happened at the Little Big Horn in 1876 when Custer and most of his 7th Calvary were destroyed. It is very well researched and explains how such a thing could have happened - along with whom was really responsible for the poor decisions made that day by the US Army leadership. It is a real eye-opener, and it's earned a permanent slot on my History bookshelf.

Now that I've come to the end of this month's reading recap, I realize just how "blah" a reading month I really had. Having had only one particularly outstanding book all month long means that September almost has to be better without even trying very hard. 

As August ends, I'm at various stages of reading: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Burgler (a 1954 noir novel by David Goodis, Isaac's Storm (Erik Larson's third book), The Three-Cornered War (a Civil War history by Megan Kate Nelson), and Leave the Grave Green by Deborah Crombie. Already, these seem to be going better than almost everything I finished it August.

Bye for now.

July 2022 Reading Highlights Include New and Old Favorites

I managed to get away for two weeks in mid-July, a road trip through parts of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Iowa that I explored for the first time. All in all, I drove just over 4,400 miles but, thanks largely in part to audiobooks, I still managed to read ten books during the month. I find that I more easily absorb audiobooks of the mystery/spy thriller type, so my July reading largely reflects that: 

1. Devil's Peak - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel #1 - South African
2. Blank Pages - Bernard MacLaverty - 12 memorable short stories from an excellent Irish author
3. Thirteen Hours - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel #2 - Two American teens run for their lives in South Africa
4. The Trawlerman - William Shaw - Alex Cupidi #5
5. Back of Beyond - C.J. Box - Standalone set in Yellowstone
6. The Ranger - Ace Atkins - Introduces the Quinn Colson series
7. Seven Days - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel series #3
8. Cobra - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel series #4
9. The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson - WWII history (1942) focusing on Churchill, Hitler, Goring, and Roosevelt
10. The Bomb Maker - Thomas Perry - crazy bomb-maker tries to wipe out entire LAPD bomb squad

My newest "favorite" writer is South Africa's Deon Meyer, whose books are translated into English from the original Afrikaans. I read the first four books in Meyer's Benny Griessel series, and I highly recommend them to fans of the police procedural genre. The books have a great feel for what life must have been like in South Africa soon after all the big political changes impacted that country - especially what happened inside the big police departments there. 

The old favorites I revisited this month were Ace Atkins (finally read the first Quinn Colson novel), William Shaw, and Erik Larson (finally read the remarkable The Splendid and the Vile). In addition, I read the relatively disappointing Back of Beyond by C.J. Box and the wonderful The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry, an author I'm appreciating more every time I read something of his. 

I'm not sure where my reading will lead me next month, but I find myself wanting to spend some time reading books on 19th century American history, along with revisiting some of the classics from the likes of Austen and the Brontes. I've purchased four books in the six-book set by Andrews McMeel Publishing that includes beautiful new editions of Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and Little Women. Each of the books is illustrated by Marjolein Bastin and include realistic facsimile inserts true to the period and story. Bottom line is that the books are all so beautiful that I consider them to be individual pieces of art. 

Let's see what happens.

June Reading Highlights and One Disappointment

June worked out pretty well for me as I continued to explore Mick Herron's work, read the latest from one of my all-time favorite authors, and read what I think is the definitive biography of my favorite singer, Merle Haggard. 

It's kind of hard for me to believe that I only so recently discovered Mick Herron's "Slough House" series of novels and short stories because I've now read three of the books. The series is a rather cynical look at international espionage and those who spy for a living, and I've enjoyed reading all three books - and I'm looking forward to reading the series all the way through. 

Merle Haggard is unfamiliar to lots of people who don't believe they have anything in common with real country music (not that watered down stuff called country today...that's not even close to being music, much less authentic country music). But if a person were forced to listen to only one singer for the rest of his life, Haggard would be a good choice. The man was a musical genius who combined his wonderful voice and songwriting skills with his life experience to create some of the most beautiful, and meaningful, music ever recorded. Haggard's life story is so unusual that Marc Eliot's Merle Haggard bio, The Hag, reads like a novel at times.

It was nice to catch up, too, with Anne Tyler again via her latest novel French Braid. This, like most of Tyler's work is an understated look at a Baltimore family over several generations. It's impact begins to hit the reader about three-quarters of the way through, and by the novel's end I found myself truly caring what would happen to these people.

So, these are the ten books I completed in June:

1. Dolphin Junction - Mick Herron - collection of short stories & novellas featuring his series characters - uneven, but fun
2. The Hag - Marc Eliot - maybe the definitive Merle Haggard bio
3. Dead Lions - Mick Herron - "Slough House" #2 - excellent story about Soviet sleeper agents who "wake up" after two decades
4. Trunk Music - Michael Connelly - Harry Bosch #5 in which Harry reconnects with ex-FBI agent Eleanor Wish and they marry
5. Death Be Not Proud - John Gunther - memoir of a father who watched his son fight a brain tumor for 15 months (1947 death)
6. Hidden Depths - Ann Cleeves - Vera Stanhope #3 (2007)
7. The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery - Amanda Cox - heavy-handed Christian novel with boring final third
8. The List - Mick Herron - Novella, "Slough House" #2.5 
9. French Braid - Anne Tyler - Gradual changes in family-tightness over four generations of a Baltimore family 
10. Nightfall - David Goodis - New York noir classic from 1946

I have to say that I was disappointed and bored by The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery but that was more my fault than the author's because I didn't do my homework before getting well into the novel. If I had, I wouldn't have begun it at all because it is part of a genre I try to avoid: "Christian novels." My distaste for these novels has nothing to do with personal faith; I simply find the vast majority of them to be very heavy-handed and predictable. And, as a result, boring.

Nightfall is a 1946 novel that could serve as the blueprint for the entire noir crime genre with its very dark, almost surreal, setting and the way that all of the main characters (cops and crooks, alike) seemed to be doomed in one way or the other. I've been a fan of David Goodis novels ever since reading Dark Passage a while back, and this one is even better than Dark Passage in my estimation.

I spent the last couple of days in June immersed in Deon Meyer's Devil's Peak but didn't finish it up until today, so it will go down as a July read. I only discovered Meyer a couple of weeks ago when I saw that he was featured on the cover of the current issue of Mystery Scene magazine. Meyer is a South African novelist who is translated into English from Afrikaans, and he is brutally honest about the culture in which he lives and writes. I'll try to add something more about him later as time allows.

I hope you are all doing well these days and that things, tough as they can be, are at least slowly returning to the life we so used to take for granted. Still busy here as always, but hoping to speak with you guys soon.

Sam

May Reading: Highlights & Disappointments

It's been a while, guys, but I thought I'd post a really brief recap of my May reading today in hopes that I may hear from some of my old friends out there.

This is what May 2022 looked like for me:

1. Savage Run - C.J. Box - Joe Picket #2 - modern range war
2. Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain - slave-baby & master's-baby switched at birth - lots of social commentary of the times
3. Indemnity Only - Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski #1 - good introduction to series main characters, but mediocre plot 
4. 1979 - Val McDermid - OK 1st book of proposed 10-book series
5. One Damn Thing After Another - William P. Barr - at almost 700 pages, it answered all the questions I had about truth in politics
6. Last Stand at Saber River - Elmore Leonard - excellent character-driven post Civil War novel set in Arizona
7. Old Man Country - Thomas R. Cole - Interviews of elderly men about living into the "4th Age" - somewhat disappointing
8. Rediscovering Travel - Seth Kugel - travel stories and tips from a professional traveler 
9. The Madness of Crowds - Louise Penny - Unnecessarily long, dark post-pandemic novel; Penny may have "jumped the shark"
10. Tyrus: A Memoir - Tyrus - short  memoir that completely manages to ignore the author's marriages and children
11. The Babes in the Wood - Ruth Rendell - excellent mystery until Rendell ruins it by having Wexford recount its climax second-hand: show me, don't tell me  
12. Slow Horses - Mick Herron - excellent tale about group of MI5 castoffs with ideas of their own - Book #1 in Slough House series

Currently Reading:

• The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson
• Dolphin Junction - Mick Herron
• The Hag - Marc Eliot

The book that knocked my sox off last month was Mick Herron's Slow Horses, and I only even became aware of Herron's "Slough House" series because Apple TV decided to make the first book into a six-part series. I was immediately fascinated  by the characters, the actors, and the premise that a bunch of MI5 failures were shunted off to a dump of a building to do nothing but paperwork for the rest of their careers. 

I'm really excited by the series and Herron's writing. Dolphin Junction is a new collection of some of his short stories and novellas, and for the most part, I'm loving those too. I'm also reading a brand new Merle Haggard biography and struggling a bit to get into The Splendid and the Vile by another of my favorite authors, Erik Larson.

I do have to say that I was disappointed by several of my old favorites, specifically by Val McDermid's 1979, Ruth Rendell's The Babes in the Wood, and Louise Penny's The Madness of Crowds. Oh, well, can't win 'em all, I guess. 

Here's hoping all of you had a wonderful reading month and that you are all doing well. I've not been able to check in on your blogs as often as I hoped, but I may surprise you with an appearance soon.

Stay well, guys.

2022 Reading Log

(For personal reasons, I've been forced to put an unplanned end to Book Chase. I do intend, however, to use the site to keep a record of my reading and will do so via this list - and perhaps other variations. Please feel free to comment in the usual manner if so inclined; I miss book blogging a lot, but I miss our conversation the most...Sam.)

5-Star Books (Ranked within Fiction and Nonfiction):

The Searchers - Alan Le May

Slow Horses Mick Herron

Fight Night - Miriam Toews

Joe Country - Mick Herron

Nightfall - David Goodis

London Rules - Mick Herron

French Braid - Anne Tyler

The Bomb Maker - Thomas Perry

Cobra - Deon Meyer

Spook Street - Mick Herron

Devil's Peak - Deon Meyer

The First Stone - Carsten Jensen

Trunk Music - Michael Connelly

Endangered - C.J. Box

Red Bones - Ann Cleeves

The King Is Dead - Ellery Queen

Raven Black - Ann Cleeves

The Junction Boys - Jim Dent - NF

To Hell with Honor - Larry Sklenar - NF

The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson - NF

One Damn Thing After Another - William P. Barr - NF

Stolen Focus - Johann Hari - NF

4-Star Books:

Black Ice - Michael Connelly

Crime Hits Home - Various Authors

Little Big Man - Thomas Berger

Wednesday's Child - Peter Robinson

Get Back - The Beatles

Cold Earth - Ann Cleeves

Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead

Tennison - Lynda La Plante

Innocent Graves - Peter Robinson

White Nights - Ann Cleeves

Cry Macho - N. Richard Nash

Dead Water - Ann Cleeves

Red Handed - Peter Schweizer

The Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green

The Silence - Susan Allott

Murder in Mykonos - Jeffrey Siger

Open Season - C.J. Box

One Writer's Beginnings - Eudora Welty

Grave's End - William Shaw

Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers - Michael E. Newton

Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain

Last Stand at Saber River - Elmore Leonard

Rediscovering Travel - Seth Kugel

Dolphin Junction - Mick Herron

The Hag - Marc Eliot

Dead Lions - Mick Herron

Death Be Not Proud - John Gunther

Hidden Depths - Ann Cleeves

The List - Mick Herron

Blank Pages - Bernard MacLaverty

Thirteen Hours - Deon Meyer

The Trawlerman - William Shaw

The Ranger - Ace Atkins

Seven Days - Deon Meyer

We Came, We Saw, We Left - Charles Wheelan

Real Tigers - Mick Herron

A String of Beads - Thomas Perry

The Burglar - David Goodis

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson

Cold Is the Grave - Peter Robinson

Black Fly Season - Giles Blunt

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow - Olivia Hawker

All That's Left Unsaid - Tracy Lien

Silent Voices - Ann Cleeves

Bad Actors - Mick Herron

The Woman They Could Not Silence - Kate Moore

3-Star Books:

Expats - Christopher Dickey

The Kings of London - William Shaw

The Illusion of Simple - Charles Forrest Jones

Final Account - Peter Robinson

The Mountain Lion - Jean Stafford

The Dutch Shoe Mystery - Ellery Queen

Black Money - Ross Macdonald

Blue Lightning - Ann Cleeves

Rizzio - Denise Mina

Thin Air - Ann Cleeves

Wild Fire - Ann Cleeves 

Maigret in New York - Georges Simenon

Blood at the Root - Peter Robinson

Savage Run - C.J. Box

Indemnity Only - Sara Paretsky

1979 - Val McDermid

Old Man Country - Thomas R. Cole

The Madness of Crowds - Louise Penny

Back of Beyond - C.J. Box

The Good Daughters - Joyce Maynard

Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old - Steven Petrow

Bridge of Spies - Giles Whittell

Blood Safari - Deon Meyer

In a Dry Season - Peter Robinson

Leave the Grave Green - Deborah Crombie

Vanishing Act - Thomas Perry

Wrong Place, Wrong Time - Gillian McAllister

Bookends - Zibby Owens

Mourn Not Your Dead - Deborah Crombi

Our Country Friends - Gary Shteyngart

The Graduate - Charles Webb

Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield

Last Summer Boys - Bill Rivers

The Maid - Nita Prose

The Long Way Home - Karen McQuestion

Stargazer - Anne Hillerman

Uprooted - Grace Olmstead 

2-Star Books:

The Words Between Us - Erin Bartels

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections - Eva Jurczyk

Shadows of Pecan Hollow - Caroline Frost

Sea of Tranquility -  Emily St. John Mandel

Tyrus: A Memoir - Tyrus

The Babes in the Wood - Ruth Rendell

The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery - Amanda Cox

The Woman in the Library - Sulari Gentill

Packing My Library - Alberto Manguel

 January 2022

1. Black Ice - Michael Connelly - Harry Bosch  #2
2. Crime Hits Home - Various Authors - Short Stories
3. Little Big Man - Thomas Berger - Classic Western Novel
4. Wednesday's Child - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #6
5. Get Back - The Beatles - Documentary Companion Book
6. Cold Earth - Ann Cleeves -  Jimmy Perez #7
7. The Illusion of Simple - Charles Forrest Jones - Crime Novel
8. Expats - Christopher Dickey - Nonfiction 
9. The Kings of London - William Shaw - Breen & Tozer #2
10. Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead - Crime Novel
11. Raven Black - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #1
12. The Words Between Us - Erin Bartels - Thriller Romance 

February 

1. The King Is Dead - Ellery Queen - 1952 Classic Mystery
2. The Searchers - Alan Le May - 1954 Classic Western
3. Final Account - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #7
4. Tennison - Lynda La Plante - Jane Tennison #4 - Prequel 
5. The Mountain Lion - Jean Stafford - 1947 coming-of-age novel
6. Innocent Graves - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #8
7. White Nights - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #2
8. Stolen Focus - Johann Hari - Big Tech impact on ADD
9. The Dutch Shoe Mystery - Ellery Queen - 1931 Classic Mystery
10. Black Money - Ross Macdonald - 1965 - Lew Archer #13
11. Red Bones - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #3

March

1. The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections - Eva Jurczyk - Novel about thefts from a university library 
2. Cry Macho -  N. Richard Nash - 1975 novel & 2021 coming-of-age movie starring Clint Eastwood (brilliant book/so-so movie)
3. Blue Lightning - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #4
4. Shadows of Pecan Hollow - Caroline Frost - Predictable crime/coming-of-age novel set in Southeast Texas
5. Dead Water - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #5: Jimmy is back
6. Red Handed - Peter Schweizer - How prominent Americans are bribed by the Chinese government and what they do in return
7. The Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green - A revealing memoir disguised as 44 short, unrelated essays
8. Rizzio - Denise Mina - novella, 16th century historical fiction
9. Thin Air - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #6
10. The Silence - Susan Allott - British mystery set in Australia 

April

1. The First Stone - Carsten Jensen - Danish novel about Afghani war
2. Wild Fire - Ann Cleeves - 8th & Final Jimmy Perez novel - flat 
3. The Junction Boys  - Jim Dent - Coach Bear Bryant's infamous 1954 football camp at Texas A&M (favorite sports book ever)
   
4. Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel - time-travel novel in which I never felt a connection to any of the characters
5. Maigret in New York - Georges Simenon - Maigret #27 (1947)
6. Endangered - C. J. Box - Joe Pickett #15; excellently plotted
7. Murder in Mykonos - Jeffrey Siger - CI Andreas Kaldis #1
8. Open Season - C.J. Box - Joe Pickett #1 - Perfect introduction
9. One Writer's Beginnings - Eudora Welty - memoir in three parts
10. Grave's End -  William Shaw - Alex Cupidi # 4 - well written, character-driven crime novel
11. Blood at the Root - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #9
12. Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers - Michael E. Newton - a revealing look at the American Revolution

May

1. Savage Run - C.J. Box - Joe Picket #2 - modern range war
2. Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain - slave-baby & master's-baby switched at birth - lots of social commentary of the times
3. Indemnity Only - Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski #1 - good introduction to series main characters, but mediocre plot 
4. 1979 - Val McDermid - OK 1st book of proposed 10-book series
5. One Damn Thing After Another - William P. Barr - at almost 700 pages, it answered all the questions I had about truth in politics
6. Last Stand at Saber River - Elmore Leonard - excellent character-driven post Civil War novel set in Arizona
7. Old Man Country - Thomas R. Cole - Interviews of elderly men about living into the "4th Age" - somewhat disappointing
8. Rediscovering Travel - Seth Kugel - travel stories and tips from a professional traveler 
9. The Madness of Crowds - Louise Penny - Unnecessarily long, dark post-pandemic novel; Penny may have "jumped the shark"
10. Tyrus: A Memoir - Tyrus - short  memoir that completely manages to ignore the author's marriages and children
11. The Babes in the Wood - Ruth Rendell - excellent mystery until Rendell ruins it by having Wexford recount its climax second-hand: show me, don't tell me  
12. Slow Horses - Mick Herron - excellent tale about group of MI5 castoffs with ideas of their own - Book #1 in Slough House series

June

1. Dolphin Junction - Mick Herron - collection of short stories & novellas featuring his series characters - uneven, but fun
2. The Hag - Marc Eliot - maybe the definitive Merle Haggard bio
3. Dead Lions - Mick Herron - "Slough House" #2 - excellent story about Soviet sleeper agents who "wake up" after two decades
4. Trunk Music - Michael Connelly - Harry Bosch #5 in which Harry reconnects with ex-FBI agent Eleanor Wish and they marry
5. Death Be Not Proud - John Gunther - memoir of a father who watched his son fight a brain tumor for 15 months (1947 death)
6. Hidden Depths - Ann Cleeves - Vera Stanhope #3 (2007)
7. The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery - Amanda Cox - heavy-handed Christian novel with boring final third
8. The List - Mick Herron - Novella, "Slough House" #2.5 
9. French Braid - Anne Tyler - Gradual changes in family-tightness over four generations of a Baltimore family 
10. Nightfall - David Goodis - New York noir classic from 1946

July

1. Devil's Peak - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel #1 - South African
2. Blank Pages - Bernard MacLaverty - 12 memorable short stories from an excellent Irish author
3. Thirteen Hours - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel #2 - Two American teens run for their lives in South Africa
4. The Trawlerman - William Shaw - Alex Cupidi #5
5. Back of Beyond - C.J. Box - Standalone set in Yellowstone
6. The Ranger - Ace Atkins - Introduces the Quinn Colson series
7. Seven Days - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel series #3
8. Cobra - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel series #4
9. The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson - WWII history (1942) focusing on Churchill, Hitler, Goring, and Roosevelt
10. The Bomb Maker - Thomas Perry - crazy bomb-maker tries to wipe out entire LAPD bomb squad

August

1. The Good Daughters - Joyce Maynard - Two very different families share a huge secret for over 50 years
2. We Came, We Saw, We Left - Charles Wheelan - man travels around the world for 9 months with wife & 3 teens - Nonfiction
3. To Hell with Honor - Larry Sklenar - Brilliant explanation of what happened at The Little Big Horn and who was responsible
4. Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old - Steven Petrow - writer vows to practice what he learned from watching his parents age
5. The Woman in the Library - Sulari Gentill - Disappointing mystery using novel-inside-a-novel structure that is stupefyingly formulaic 
6. Real Tigers - Mick Herron - #4 in the terrific Slough House series 
7. A String of Beads - Thomas Perry - Jane Whitefield #8 - Jane hides he childhood Seneca best friend from cops and killers 
8. Bridge of Spies - Giles Whittell - Account of U-2 pilot Gary Powers, his capture by Russia and exchange for Russian spy
9. Blood Safari - Deon Meyer - Second novel in Meyer's Lemmer series about a South African bodyguard
10. In a Dry Season - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #10 - a case going back to World War II; Banks meets DS Annie Cabbot
11. Packing My Library - Alberto Manguel - Argentinian author's 10 essays and 10 "digressions" on packing away his personal library

September

1. The Burglar - David Goodis - '50s noir at its best - really gets into the heads of the gang members and what motivates them
2. Leave the Grave Green - Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James #3 - in which the pair get "romantic"
3. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë - the classic anti-Jane-Austen-novel; filled with dark, cruel, and egotistical characters
4. Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson - nonfiction account of the September 8, 1900 hurricane that almost wiped out the city of Galveston
5. Spook Street - Mick Herron - #5 in Slough House series - proves that this series really does need to be read in order; it's brilliant
6. Vanishing Act - Thomas Perry - Jane Whitefield series #1; Jane fails a client - does not feel as formulaic as the more recent books
7. Wrong Place, Wrong Time - Gillian McAllister - "Can you stop a murder after it happens?" One woman sure hopes so.
8. Cold Is the Grave - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #11 - Banks's chief nemesis has his whole family destroyed
9. Bookends - Zibby Owens - found it difficult to feel a lot of empathy for the author of this memoir; not bad, otherwise
10. Mourn Not Your Dead - Deborah Crombie - rather simple mystery in this 4th Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series novel

October

1. Fight Night - Miriam Toews - novel about a nine-year-old and her grandmother, each who thinks she's taking care of the other
2. Black Fly Season - Giles Blunt - #3 in six-book Canadian detective series featuring John Cardinal of Algonquin Bay
3. One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow - Olivia Hawker - two women are forced to share a single homestead in 1876 snowbound Wyoming if they are to survive - and one hates the other 
4. Our Country Friends - Gary Stheyngart - Friends gather at a New York state estate to quarantine as the world tries to deal with COVID-19 in early 2020 
5. The Graduate - Charles Webb - Pretty much the same plot as the movie, but "Ben" is an obvious sociopath and "Elaine" has mental problems of her own. Now I need to re-watch the movie.

November

1. Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield - After being trapped in a submarine for five months, a woman returns to her wife
2. Last Summer Boys - Bill Rivers - coming-of-age novel about three brothers and their city-boy cousin in rural PA
3. The Maid - Nita Prose - a somewhere-on-the-spectrum maid in a big hotel discovers a murder victim then plays with everyone's minds, including the reader's
4. The Long Way Home - Karen McQuestion - 4 women, all strangers, drive from Wisconsin to Las Vegas
5. All That's Left Unsaid - Tracy Lien - Set in 1996 small town Australia; explores the Vietnamese immigrant experience 
6. Stargazer - Anne Hillerman - Bernie Manuelito does not believe her old college roommate when she confesses to murder

December

1. Silent Voices - Ann Cleeves - Vera Stanhope #4, in which a woman is strangled in the steam room of Vera's hotel health club
2. Uprooted - Grace Olmstead - nonfiction - the author considers going back to Idaho - a look at declining family farm industry
3. Bad Actors - Mick Herron - When a Russian mole is discovered working with the PM, the scramble to get rid of her is frantic
4. London Rules - Mick Herron - North Korean terrorists use MI5 game-plan in London
5. The Woman They Could Not Silence - Kate Moore - Nonfiction account of woman wrongly confined to insane asylum by husband
6. Joe Country - Mick Herron - Slow Horses' search for son of former colleague's son culminates in bloody Wales snowstorm

Currently Reading: 

• The World Played Chess - Robert Dugoni
• The Marylebone Drop - Mick Herron

Categories:

• E-books - 32
• Audiobooks - 32
• Abandoned - 9
• Translations - 7
• Library Books - 79
• From My Shelves - 28
• Review Copies - 3
• Amazon Prime Loans - 5
• Fiction - 91
• Nonfiction - 24

• Male Authors - 73
• Female Authors - 41
• By Both - 1

• American - 59
• British - 39
• Canadian - 6
• Danish - 1
• French - 1
• South African - 5
• Irish - 1
• Australian - 2
• Argentinian - 1

• 2022 - 19
• 2021 - 18
• 2020 - 3
• 2010s- 31
• 2000s - 14
• 1990s - 14
• 1980s - 1
• 1970s - 1
• 1960s - 3
• 1950s - 4
• 1940s - 4
• 1930s - 1
• 1920s - 0
• 1910s - 0
• 1900s - 0
• 1800s - 2

Pages Read: 

• Jan -    3,348
• Feb -   3,559
• Mar -  3,326
• Apr -   3,466
• May -  3,316
• Jun -    3,229
• Jul -     3,702
• Aug -   3,265
• Sep -    2,774
• Oct -    1,738
• Nov -   2,082
• Dec -    1,991
• Total - 35,896

International Television Crime Series - Part 2

More of my favorite television series from around the world:

Astrid (Called Astrid et Raphaëlle in France) 

French with subtitles

One Season (9 episodes in total) with more to come

Premise: Astrid Nielsen, who has Asperger's syndrome, maintains the evidence and case files in the judicial police library. She has an incredible memory and uses her own brand of logic to solve puzzles, so the police district commander decides to have her take a look at a number of cold cases. She is partnered with Raphaëlle, and their relationship is half the fun. Great characters. Good mysteries.

Starring: Sara Mortensen, Lola Dewaere, and Benoit Michel

My Rating: 5 Stars

Guilt

British (PBS/Masterpiece)

One Season (4 episodes in total)

Premise: Two very different brothers, one wealthy and successful, the other barely scraping by as a record shop owner, get themselves into big trouble one night when they accidentally run over a pedestrian on a quiet residential street. Their attempt to cover up their involvement in the old man's death takes numerous twists and turns. Quirky, fun, sometimes funny, this one will suck you right in.

Starring: Mark Bonnar (a personal favorite), Jamie Sives, and Ruth Bradley

My Rating: 4 stars

DCI Banks

British

5 Seasons plus the pilot (32 episodes in total)

Premise: Based on the long Inspector Banks series by author Peter Robinson, this is a character-driven series of police procedurals headed up by a man who fled London police work for a quieter career. Looks like he was wrong about that...of course.

Starring: Stephen Tompkinson and Andrea Lowe

My Rating: 3 Stars

Bloodlands

British

One Season (4 episodes in total)

Premise: A police detective is charged with investigating a series of disappearances that occurred almost 20 years earlier during Northern Irelands violent and bloody past. One of the people who disappeared was his own wife, and when people around the investigation begin to die, the detective knows he is getting close to finding those responsible. The main character is always interesting, but this one is very dark.

Starring: James Nesbitt, Lorcan Cranitch, and Charlene McKenna

My Rating: 3.5 Stars

Elizabeth Is Missing

British (PBS/Masterpiece)

One 87-minute movie

Premise: An old woman, who is moving deeper and deeper into dementia, worries that something bad has happened to her missing friend, Elizabeth. She begins looking for clues on her own but her old memories get confused with her present day investigation to the extent that she starts inadvertently recovering clues to her sister's disappearance of decades earlier. She needs to solve both mysteries before her own mind makes it too late for that to ever happen. It's a race against the clock and calendar. 

Starring: Glenda Jackson (a personal favorite), Helen Behan, and Sophie Rundle

My Rating: 5 Stars

Bäckström

Swedish with subtitles

One Season (6 episodes total)

Premise: By this point in his career, Bäckström is as much a national TV star in Sweden as he is a police investigator. He has become everyone's go-to guy for TV interviews that television commentators love to do when fresh crimes are being speculated about. This time he is investigating one of the strangest murders he's ever run across during his long career: the skull of a recent murder victim has been uncovered but the victim is known to have died years earlier. Great characters.

Starring: Kjell Bergqvist, Agnes Lindström Bolmgren, and Livia Millhagan 

My Rating: 4 Stars

International Television Crime Series - Part 1

Like so many of you, I am almost as big a fan of international crime television series as I am of published crime fiction. The interesting thing to me is how much the television shows and the books overlap...although  when that happens, I always end up preferring the books to the television.

Here are some of the television series from around the world that I have either already enjoyed or am still in the process of enjoying:

Agathe Koltès

French with subtitles

One Season  (10 episodes total)

Premise: Big city cop comes to coastal village to join the local police force commanded by her daughter, who resents her. Their relationship is kept secret from everyone else...until it slips out. 

Starring: Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu and Hortense Gélinet 

My Rating: 4 Stars

Blood

Irish/British

Two Seasons (12 episodes total)

Premise: A young woman becomes convinced that her father had something to do with her mother's sudden death.

Starring: Adrian Dunbar and Carolina Main. 

My Rating: 5 stars Season 1, 4 stars Season 2

Bosch

American

Seven Seasons (68 episodes total)

Premise: LA cop Harry Bosch refuses to play by the rules but he is the best detective in the precinct. Based on the Michael Connelly Bosch series. 

Starring: Titus Welliver, Jamie Hector, Amy Aquino, Lance Reddick, and Madison Lintz.

My Rating: 5 Stars for all seasons

Tin Star

British

Three Seasons (25 episodes total)

Premise: Former London cop takes a job as chief of police in small town Canada. It all begins innocently enough before his past catches up with him and all hell breaks loose.

Starring: Tim Roth, Genevieve O'Reilly, Christina Hendricks, and Abigail Lawrie.

My Rating: 5 Stars for Seasons One and Two 

The Long Call

British

One Season (4 episodes total)

Premise: To be with his partner, a gay policeman returns to the town from which he was ostracized years earlier by a fundamentalist religious cult. His past haunts him daily. (Based on the Ann Cleeves novel)

Starring: Ben Aldridge, Declan Bennett, Sarah Gordy, Anita Dobson, and Siobhán Cullen.

My Rating: 3 Stars

The Blood Pact

Dutch series with subtitles

Three Seasons (30 total episodes)

Premise: A mobster recently released from prison coerces a Dutch tax official into helping him solve his money problems. Their eventual bonding surprises both of them.

Starring: Barry Atsma, Georgina Verbaan, and Jacob Derwig. 

My Rating:  A solid 5 all the way through

As much for my own record-keeping and memory-jogging as for anything else, I'm going to add to this original group of favorite television series as time allows. In the meantime, I hope some of you find something here that you might enjoy. Too, please feel free to recommend your own favorite TV series in any comments you post below. 

Cold Earth - Ann Cleeves

Cold Earth, published in 2016, is the seventh book in the eight-book Shetland series by Ann Cleeves. Prior to reading this one, my only experience with the series and its characters came via the very successful television series based on the books. Fans of both will already know that there are some significant differences between the books and the television shows, but it is worth mentioning a couple of them. 

First, the physical appearance of the main character, Jimmy Perez, is not at all the same. In the television series, people meeting Jimmy for the first time are a little startled by his surname because he bears no resemblance to their stereotypical idea of what a “Perez” should look like. In the shows, Jimmy sometimes explains the origin of the name in his bloodline. That is something he does not have to do much in the books because he is described in those as having dark hair and eyes — people meeting him for the first time are likely to be more surprised by his Shetland/Scottish accent than by his physical appearance.

Second, and must more significantly, Jimmy’s stepdaughter Cassie is about a decade younger in the books than she is in the television series. Even as near the end of the series as Cold Earth is, Jimmy is still having to look for babysitters for the little girl when he is unexpectedly called out on a case. At a similar stage of the television series, Cassie is already living on the mainland and only returns to the Shetlands for periodic visits to her two fathers. This age difference places the focus on two very different aspects of Jimmy’s personality in the books and shows. 

The opening of Cold Earth is one of my favorite parts of the novel: a small crowd has gathered in a hilltop cemetery to say goodbye to an old friend of Jimmy’s. It’s cold, windy, and rainy already, and everyone is plenty miserable even before a mudslide triggered by days of torrential rain comes roaring toward them. The slide is bad enough that all the cemetery’s headstones are smashed and carried further downhill, and the crowd can do nothing but watch helplessly as a nearby small house is totally destroyed by the mud that slams into it. The only good news is that no one lives in the house because its elderly owner has recently died.

So what’s to be made of the total stranger, a dark-haired woman dressed in a beautiful red silk dress, that Jimmy discovers in the wreckage? 

No one knows her name, where she’s from, or even how long she may have been living in the now-destroyed house. Soon enough, though, Jimmy discovers a little wooden box amid the rubble that contains pictures of two children and an unsigned letter addressed to someone called Alis. Beginning with what’s in the box, and with a lot of help from the mainland Scottish police, Jimmy starts pulling on one thread after the other until it all starts to make sense. But what he is about to learn has the power to destroy families, ruin countless reputations, and get others killed, including someone close to him. 

Bottom Line: Ann Cleeves has a well deserved reputation as one of the finest crime writers working today, having already enjoyed huge success with both her Shetland series and her Vera Stanhope series. Her new Two Rivers series featuring Detective Matthew Venn has also been well received and is off to an excellent start. Cold Earth (I wish I could reveal the origin of that title without having to use a spoiler to do it) is another example of her brilliance, and I am looking forward to reading more of the Jimmy Perez story very soon.

Ann Cleeves