The Widower's Two-Step by Rick Riordan

Reading is like eating.

It's not good for you to have the same kind of food all the time. A hamburger now and then can be a treat, but if that's all you ate you would start yearning for a meal that requires a knife and fork. Pizza is fun, but if you ate it continually you would start craving a salad. Complex gourmet dishes with interesting sauces and textures are delicious, but a steady diet of such food would make you feel sluggish and bloated. And some foods are just so yucky they shouldn't be eaten at all--potted meat and spray-can "cheese," for example.

I am convinced that if you read the same kind of books all the time you will have similar results. Light, strictly plot-driven books are fun to read, but after too many your mind becomes mushy and craves more substantial fare. Too many complex books which are slow reading and examine serious issues can tire your brain and sometimes make you slightly depressed. And occasionally books come along which shouldn't be read by anyone, ever.

This is a pizza book: It's fun, it's quickly and easily consumed, and it's a bit spicy, but not too much. And not just a cheese pizza either, but one with several toppings and a well-made crust. Not the best pizza you ever ate, but very good all the same.

It's a detective novel in the style of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, with a smart-talking hero, sultry sirens, and violent villains. But Rick Riordan's detective Tres Navarre is a kinder, gentler version of Hammett's Sam Spade and Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. He is also more educated, having a PhD from Berkley in medieval literature, as well as being a private investigator.

Tres is called in to shadow a musician who is suspected of stealing a demo tape of an up-and-coming female country singer in an attempt to sabotage her signing with a major record label. Simple, right? Then the suspect is shot and killed right before his eyes. How can he help himself--he has to continue investigating. Along the way, he encounters many musicians, German-speaking tough guys, two enticing females, multiple murders, several double crosses, surprising twists, and a money-making scheme much more complicated than he ever expected.

Riordan has done a good job, following the standard mystery formula. His hero is interesting and the dialogue is stylish and often quite humorous. The violence, while somewhat graphic, is tastefully handled. The surprise twists are not all surprising, but the plot plays out logically and all the loose ends are tied up.

But it's the details which made the book fascinating to me. Many of the characters must be portraits of people Riordan actually knew, because they are so life-like. His descriptions of various Austin locations and neighborhoods are spot-on perfect (been there, done that), and I suspect the same is true of his descriptions of San Antonio. He is particularly adept at conveying the distinct flavors of the two cities, so close to each other and yet so different in many ways.

Riordan is no Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, but he writes a good mystery. This one won the Edgar Award from The Mystery Writers of America. Recommended.

Money by Martin Amis

Money is like a rambling standup comic monologue by one of those chain-smoking, foul-mouthed, self-deprecating, sarcastic comedians who make you laugh in spite of yourself, even while you cringe at the lack of political correctness and the cruel nature of the humor. Among other things, Amis satirizes Hollywood stars, fast food, life in the fast lane, and mainly money--the pure pornography of it and addiction to it. This is is seriously funny stuff, in the true sense of the words.

The monologue is given by John Self, an ad-man who makes a living creating soft-porn commercials for junk food. As the story begins he has become involved in putting together a movie with a producer he just happens to meet on an airplane. Flying back and forth from London to New York City, he indulges in his various vices in both places--smoking incessantly, drinking alcohol to oblivion, indulging in junk food, having vigorous and inventive sex with whomever, and "pleasuring himself" with the aid of pornography. Along with the rest of society, however, what really turns him on is money, lots and lots of money.

This novel manages to be crude, insightful, ironic, comedic, savage, Freudian, lyrically descriptive, and somewhat post-modern (Amis includes himself as one of the characters), all at once. The writing is dazzling, although verging at times on pretentiousness. The hero has few admirable qualities. The graphic sex scenes are undoubtedly the most non-erotic in literature (but that is intentional). The plot is contrived and non-believable. It's a great book.

Included in the Times Top 100. Recommended for those not easily offended who have a sardonic sense of humor.

Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling

I first became fascinated with the "survival outside of civilization" plot line when I was about ten years old and read The Swiss Family Robinson. I read it over and over, fascinated with how clever and ingenious the family was in providing for themselves. The implausibility of such inventiveness with supplies that just happened to be on the wrecked ship never entered my mind. So, too, with Robinson Crusoe. I kind of skimmed over the preachy parts but loved the survival bits.

Fast forward to adulthood. Modern books of the survival genre could no longer depend on a small group or an individual being stranded alone on an island, because that was, of course, much less likely to happen. So writers turned to disasters to strand their characters, usually nuclear war. I remember Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, which alerted me to the importance of having a supply of salt in my survival supplies. Later I read The Stand by Stephen King and Swan Song by Robert McCammon, both of which feature a good-versus-evil, supernatural viewpoint, rather skimpy, however, on the details of what the survivors have to do to feed themselves. Then, more recently, came The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It was the most chilling, the most well written, and probably the most realistic of the lot.

Finally getting to the novel being reviewed--this is Stirling's take on the post-apocalypse. His disaster is selective: a bright pulse of light that knocks out all electrical devices, all gas-powered engines, and all guns. The source of the light is unknown (space aliens?), and it is impossible to learn the extent of the coverage. Two separate groups come together in separate places to try to survive, eventually coming together to help each other with their own special talents.

The Bearkiller clan is led by a fierce fighting man, who has trained his followers to battle against the inevitable bad guys. The Mackenzie clan is led by the High Priestess of a Wiccan coven, who has led her group into an agrarian lifestyle, farming, gardening, and stock tending. Happily met, indeed.

The most interesting part of this narrative, for me, was the introduction of Wiccan beliefs and practices, of which I knew next to nothing. Some internet research was in order, of course. That made it possible for me to somewhat accept the abundant coincidences which populate the novel, because in the Wiccan belief, "There are no coincidences." Time after time, the two groups happen upon people who have just the survival skills the group needs--experts in blacksmithing, horse training, archaic sword fighting, tactics for fighting with pre-gun weapons, hang-gliding, and so forth.

The part about survival on the land was fascinating. I was alerted to the importance of having seeds for crops and a reliable source of water. (What would you do if all electricity went out and the grocery stores in your cities ran out of food and the gas stations ran out of fuel?) I resolved to always have cash on hand to use before stores realized that the end had come and paper money would soon have no value. I was clued-in about which supplies I should hoard--not cans (too heavy to carry enough) but dried foods, like rice, beans, jerky, and fruit. And matches, and a couple of pans, and the awareness of somewhere I could buy or steal a horse. Not that I will do any of this, but maybe I should.

The part about fighting the bad guys was not so interesting to me. I know we have predators around us who are kept somewhat in check from widespread mayhem by civilization, but as a somewhat wimpy, old female, I cannot imagine myself fighting them. This part is rather detailed and would be interesting to guys, I would expect.

All-in-all, I would say this is certainly an interesting read, although not a classic in the genre.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

In Victorian literature, the marriage plot is the one where the heroine has to choose between two suitors for her hand in marriage, as in Pride and Prejudice, for example. The climax of the plot is the moment the choice is made, after which the couple lives happily ever after.

Eugenides has written a more modern version of the marriage plot, his romance taking place in the early 1980s. His three protagonists, all seniors at Brown University when the novel begins, are Madeleine, from an affluent and cultured family, whose intellectual passion is Victorian literature; Mitchell, a serious-minded young man from a loving family who has become obsessed with Christian mysticism and with Madeleine; and Leonard, a charismatic and intellectually brilliant youth from a dysfunctional family, whose brooding charm makes him seemingly irresistible to women. Guess which one Madeleine chooses?

Eugenides rather obviously selected this time period for his novel because he, also, graduated from Brown in the early '80s, and because the character Mitchell is, also rather obviously, patterned after himself and some of his post-college experiences.

The plot of the novel unfolds in a rather hodge-podge manner, jumping backward and forward in time and from character to character in its third-person viewpoint. The first part recounts time in the university and includes much intellectual preening on the part of the characters, which is oh-so-typical of the liberal arts university atmosphere and is surely present even today. The second part tells of life-after-graduation, when the characters are dumped into the real world to figure out who they really are and what they are going to make of their lives.

The Marriage Plot is both engaging and infuriating. The pacing and suspense of the story demands attention, even when the writer seems to be indulging in some intellectual preening himself. The characters are well realized and realistic, even if not totally likeable. The section from the viewpoint of a manic-depressive character is so chilling and authentic-sounding, I have to wonder if Eugenides is not manic-depressive himself. The book trapped me and I read it far into the night.

Now comes the infuriating part. The writing is very uneven, veering from flashes of brilliance to triteness. (The mentions of the beauty of Madeleine rivaled the number of mentions of the handsomeness of Edward in the Twilight books, and when Madeleine tells Leonard, "You are so big," I felt like gagging.) But my main complaint is that the "point" or "message" of the novel seems muddled. On one hand, Eugenides seems to be commenting on the way the sexual revolution and the feminist movement have changed "the marriage plot." On the other hand, he seems to be saying that "the marriage plot" has not changed in its essentials at all. At least in Victorian novels the heroine finally makes the right decision. In this reworking, the heroine is so passive that she actually allows someone else (and a male) to make the final decision for her. So much for women's liberation.

I will have to think about this novel further, and maybe I will come to a more favorable conclusion, or maybe not. Recommended as a most interesting read.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

This extraordinary book is both two novels and a history of the fall of France in World War II, unique in that the events it recounts were taking place simultaneously with its writing. And through the appendices and the reprinting of the preface to the original French edition (2004), it is also the tragic biography of the author, a Russian emigre to France of Jewish ancestry who died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Irene Nemirovsky and her family moved to France, where she graduated from university, married a banker who was also a Russian Jew, and became a respected and successful novelist, writing in French, her second language. With the advent of World War II, as the German army fought its way to Paris, her life changed.

She and her husband and two little girls fled Paris ahead of the conquering army, and the first novel of this two-novel suite concerns just that subject. Called Storm in June, the story follows several wealthy upper-middle-class families and individuals as they attempt to take their valuables to safety from the Germans. Without exception, they are revealed to be overly concerned with possessions, filled with class snobbery, and self-centered. The only sympathetic characters are the few of the lower-middle-class, who try to help their fellow countrymen.

The second novel in the suite, Dolce, concerns itself with the German occupation of France. As Nemirovsky and her husband lived in a small occupied rural village, she was writing the story of how the wealthy landowners and aristocracy adapted themselves to their status as a conquered people. Again, she conveys a critical tone toward the upper-middle-class. Surprisingly, she seems to be somewhat sympathetic toward the German occupiers, who are portrayed as barely more than children who are only obeying orders. She even includes a love story between conquered and conqueror, because, after all, they are only men and women.

Nemirovsky had planned the suite as five volumes, with the remaining ones being titled Captivity, Battles, and Peace. One appendix to this volume includes her notes as to the plot of the third novel. About the other two, she knew she would have to wait until events unfolded.

She was not permitted to complete her masterwork. She was arrested as a Jew of foreign nationality (She had never obtained French citizenship.) and taken to Auschwitz, where she died. Only a few months later, her husband was also arrested and taken to Auschwitz, where he was gassed in the ovens immediately. The two children were hidden by their nanny and moved from place to place, constantly on the run from the French police, until after the war.

The oldest daughter kept her mother's large notebook for 64 years, thinking it was a diary and never reading it because of the sorrow it would bring. Finally she read it and realized that it was the text of two novels and the notes for a third. And this volume was published.

It is extremely hard to separate the background story to consider the novels on their own merits. This was a first draft, and in one appendix her notes indicate some episodes she intended to revise. The novels are perhaps overly critical of France's upper-middle-class at the time, but this was Nemirovsky's milieu, and they had rejected her once the Germans branded her as a Jew. I would be bitter, too. But even unrevised and without the author's background story, this would still be a must-read. With her death, we have been deprived of a historical and literary masterpiece, written as it happened.

Desperadoes by Ron Hansen

Live again those thrilling days of yesteryear, when six-guns blazed and train robbers became as famous as rock stars, when the lawman and the fugitive were sometimes good friends, when good-hearted women stood by their men.

This is the story of the Dalton Gang. Author Ron Hansen casts his novel as a reminiscence written by Emmett Dalton, the last survivor of the gang, who ended his days in California as "a real-estate broker, a building contractor, a scriptwriter for Western movies, a church man, a Rotarian, a member of Moose Lodge 29, which is a true comeuppance for a desperado of the Old West...." And, amazingly, most of the tale as told here is true. Emmett Dalton did indeed survive the foiled bank robbery which spelled the end for two of his brothers, and, after 14 years in prison, became rich in California, even starring in a movie of the gang's exploits, playing his younger self!

Hanson's writing skill makes this novel much more than an adventure story or a run-of-the-mill historical novel. The narrator tells the story in a matter-of-fact dead-pan fashion, which sometimes lends itself to flashes of humor and surprisingly descriptive eloquence. For example, two of the gang, in leisure hours, are portrayed as "...leaping from the tin roof of a shed onto their saddles." I guess I never thought that such skills, often seen in movies, had to be practiced. One piece of description (among many such) reports that a train stoker "smelled worse than sparrows burned dead in a chimney." This concrete and descriptive tone is also used in the many depictions of violent death, which are not humorous in the least.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the novel is the revelation of why the Daltons seemingly drifted from being peace officers into being outlaws. The leader of the gang, Bob Dalton, confesses to obsessing about "how famous I'm going to be." As Emmett Dalton lies recuperating from the last shoot-out, lines of the curious stretch around the block to peer into a window at him. He says, "...I wished my brother Bob were alive instead of me because I know that he'd love that; how he'd love that."

And Emmett Dalton did become famous and was able to capitalize on his fame to make money in California. The irony of it all!

I recommend this book. It is great fun to read.

Year Two of Reading

I review my year's reading on my birthday rather than on January 1, because I first began posting about books on that date (April 22). This year I read 111 books, a mix of classics, best sellers, old favorites, detective stories, science fiction, travel (1), history, biography, and (what a treat!) one book-in-progress by a former student, Joseph Scott Coy.

I believe I read more REALLY GOOD BOOKS this year than in any other year of my life. And I can credit this completely to my computer and to the internet, something I would have formerly believed to be impossible. (I viewed all the time people spent on their computers as wasted time. Now I realize that one person's time waste may be another person's obsession!) The internet enabled me to scout out good books as nothing else ever has. I could find lists of prize winners--Pulitzer, National Book Award, Nobel, Booker, Hugo, Nebula, and so forth. Then I could look up the unknown books I discovered to learn more about them. I could happen upon the web sites and blogs of other readers and read their reviews and recommendations. I could receive recommendations from book sellers on the web ("If you like this, you might also like this."). I could find many "Top 100" lists from various sources (Modern Library, Times, Guardian, etc.). And I could pester some of my Facebook friends who are readers for recommendations. In this regard I thank Jonathan Aaron Baker, Brandon Watson, Patti Watson, Mike Myrick, Rachael Hall, Joe Coy, and Tim Ristow for their recommendations.

Here is my list of top 12 books for my reading year. I read so many good ones, I could not stop at 10.

BOOKS I LIKED BEST
*At Swim-Two Birds by Flan O'Brien--because it is funny, inventive, and the language is wonderful.
*Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake--because it evokes an atmosphere and a place better than any book I have ever read.
*Ghostwritten by David Mitchell--because he is better than anyone I know at providing distinctive voices for his characters.
*The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brian--because it conveys truth through fiction about war and what it does to participants.
*On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry--because the story is heart-wrenching and the writing is pure poetry.
*I, Claudius by Robert Graves--because it is the best historical novel I have ever read.
*Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter--because it blurs the boundaries between what is real and what is not, and I like that.
*A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan--because it is funny and sad at the same time and makes a complicated and inventive structure all fit together and not look like intellectual preening.
*Blindness by Jose Saramago--because it presents the "civilization-in-peril" scenario with more grace and humanity than anyone else has.
*Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee--because it is subtle but persuasive in its message for today. And the writing is impeccable.
+The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad--because it is the best and first of the genre and conveys characterization subtly. And because when I finished the last couple of pages, I realized I had been holding my breath.
*Nostromo by Joseph Conrad--because it has everything: plot, pacing, characterization, symbolism, relevance for today, and readable and masterful writing. Easily the best book of the year for me.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
*Ubik by Phillip K. Dick--because his warped imagination can draw me in like no other sci-fi writer.
*Room by Emily Donahue--because her story touched my emotional heart-strings more than any other. Actually, it's not that outstanding a book, but I loved it anyway.

MOST DISLIKED OF THE YEAR
*Post Office by Charles Bukowski--because it is arrogant, self-indulgent, and glorifies general sorriness. Plus, it is not even well written.

That's it for this year.