Read anything good lately?

Cuz not much point having a Nook if there’s nothing worth reading on the thing.

Just finished Christopher Moore’s Fool . . . probably my favorite of his thus far (and I think I’ve read all but one or two of his books).

I’ve gotta get some sleep. Slept like crap last night thanks to, oh, who knows. Caffeine? Chocolate? Forgetting to take my Benadryl?

All of the above?

So what are you reading? Or have read. I’m in the mood for something escapist.

D.

Currently reading . . .

It’s a curious thing, what holds my attention and what doesn’t. I made it through over 100 pages of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian before my interest flagged. Only reason I bought it was (A) Michael Chabon raves about it every chance he gets, and (B) I didn’t hate The Road. McCarthy is clearly a competent author. It’s like me and China Mieville: I keep wanting to like the guy, but it’s just not happening for me.

On a bookstore browse I bought Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. Made it farther on this one: my bookmark is on page 309. Too bad I’m less than 1/3 of the way through. Apparently, this is three novels in one: an Indian gangster bildungsroman (the part I enjoy), a cop story, and something else I haven’t quite figured out. I’m tempted to skip all the other stuff and just read about the gangster, but I’m too OCD for such shenanigans. And so it sits on my TBR (TBF, To Be Finished?) pile.

And then somehow I chanced on John Connolly’s The Gates Of Hell Are About to Open (Want to Take a Peek?), which I admit I bought for the title alone. I’ll probably finish this one, but mostly because of an “I made it this far” mentality. What a disappointment. It’s one of those lonely maladjusted preadolescent boy saves the world from Satan novels, clearly meant to be a YA barnstormer, but Connolly seems to think that if anything bad happens to one of his human characters, his readers will fling the book away in horror. In his reluctance to scare his readers or offend their tender sensibilities, Connolly creates demons that are absolute wimps who can be driven off with bug spray and a fly swatter. Have I said “What a disappointment” yet? Oh, yeah, I have. And it is.

But then Jake finished Christopher Moore’s Coyote Blue, and at last I’m having a good read. But when have I not enjoyed a Christopher Moore novel? Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove was a bit of a snore, but even that one had enough narrative drive to compel me to finish. Really, what’s going on with some of these authors? Doesn’t Vikram Chandra realize that no one is going to finish a 1000 page book if it lacks narrative drive, no matter how well he writes? Yes, yes, it’s about SELLING the book, not getting your readers to finish it.

And this is where you tell me what you’re reading . . . or rather, what you’re going to finish.

D.

Ripping good yarn

Just finished Charlie Huston’s Six Bad Things, sequel to Caught Stealing, which I micro-reviewed here a little while ago. Six Bad Things is even better than Caught Stealing — funnier, bloodier (maybe; I didn’t do a body count), more poignant. Hank Thompson is back, and we get to find out exactly what he’ll do to protect his parents, who have been not so subtly threatened by the Russian mob. Along the way home he’ll meet up with a drug-dealing stripper, a truckload of mullet-headed subgeniuses who recognize Hank from his America’s Most Wanted episode (an entire episode devoted to Hank, that is), a variety of crooks both blood-crazed and half-witted, and a dog named Hitler.

The appeal of Huston’s Hank Thompson series lies in Hank, of course. On the one hand, he’s a guy who’s fell into the shit purely from doing a favor for a friend. On the other, he’s a guy who is finding it easier and easier to kill strangers and friends alike. Watching Hank’s devolution from nice guy to “dangerous man” (the title of book three in this trilogy) is a lot like watching the wreck of the Hindenburg. He never stops caring about his parents and the other innocents who get swept up in his violent whirlwind, so he never quite loses his appeal — his humanity, if you’ll forgive another Hindenburg reference. He seems like such a nice young man even when he’s shooting holes in people’s bellies.

I do have a few problems with this book. Hank is just so damned stupid sometimes. I mean, here he is one of America’s Most Wanted, and he thinks he can protect his parents by going straight to them? Not a wise play. And Huston also violated (to a mild degree) Chekhov’s Law, inasmuch as he trotted out Hitler and then failed to use him to maximal effect.

Quibbles notwithstanding, this was one of those rare books I had to take with me to work and read to the wee hours of the morning. I’ve already ordered book three.

D.

Another shout-out for Huston

Just finished Charlie Huston’s Caught Stealing, and wow, what a read. The plot is pure MacGuffin — Hank Thompson, a Californian transplanted to New York City, does a favor for the guy across the hall. He looks after his neighbor’s cat while the guy is away seeing to an ailing father. But there’s something in the cat’s carrying case that some very bad men want, and before long, Hank’s world is breaking into pieces. For starters, he gets the shit kicked out of him and loses a kidney.

Pure Maltese Falcon, only a hell of a lot more violent.

Hank’s such a likable guy that when he starts doing bad things, I didn’t feel alienated from him; no, I said to myself, “Yeah, I would have bashed that guy’s head in with a baseball bat, too.” He cares a lot about people (his sort-of-girlfriend, his parents, his neighbor’s cat) and that made me care about him. I wanted very much to see him come out of this mess in one piece, preferably with all the loot, and if he had to step of a few toes or blow away a leg or a neck, well, so be it.

Huston has a blog, too. He updates infrequently but his posts are interesting — like this one on the agony of having to write thousands of beats.

And now I get to start his just-released My Dead Body, his latest Joe Pitt novel (a series I blogged about here).

So, um, gotta go . . .

D.

Sorting them out

I can’t part myself from Path Beyond the Stars or any of the other dozen hard-to-find vintage SFs which, while uniformly atrocious, give me some weird sense of comfort.

I could make an appreciable dent in these piles by giving away all of my Pratchett, but I keep thinking that one day, my son is bound to catch the Pratchett bug. I mean, the kid sucks down everything Christopher Moore writes; he’s bound to like Pratchett, right?

And I can’t give away our graphic novels, nor my classics (SOME day I’ll manage to read Paradise Lost), my nature books, my pet care books, or books written by my friends. I would like to give away 120 Days of Sodom but I figure no one else will want it on his shelf, either.

I can’t give away Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor series, since I hope to reread it one of these days, nor can I give up Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49, which I find unreadable, but I still want to know why some folks still make a fuss about Pynchon. I won’t give away my Michio Kaku or Steven Weinberg or Kip Thorne — all scientists who have popularized their work for the lay reader — because my son might want to read them some day.

I’m having an easier time parting with a good number of writing books which never did me a damn bit of good, such as The Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Science Fiction, whose title implies that I am something lower than an idiot. Al Gore’s Assault on Reason isn’t going to take up shelf space, nor the work of Cory Doctorow, Scott Lynch, Joe Haldeman, Jon Scalzi, or China Mieville. I’ve enjoyed some of these authors but I have no desire to reread their work. Out they go.

I think I need to go back through the “keep piles” with a sterner eye. But how can I give up my volumes from the Norton Library, or my handsome two-volume collection of Sherlock Holmes stories which I’ll never read but which I’ll always mean to read? It’s hard to part with books you’ve read partially and meant to finish but never did. Like Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, which lies on my table eighteen inches away, and which has once again lost my interest. (Yeah, that one’s gotta go.)

And don’t even get me started about all of our textbooks.

D.