LOST LIGHT by Michael Connelly

 Finished We 10/25/23

This is a hardback that Janny loaned to me and she picked it up at a garage sale. This is one of the later books in the Harry Bosch series.

I was surprised to learn (as was Harry) that his wife was pregnant when she broke up with Harry and went to Las Vegas to become a professional gambler. Harry and Maddie, his four year old daughter are introduced at the end of the novel. 

From the book's page at Wikipedia:

"Lost Light is the ninth novel in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. It is the first Bosch novel to be narrated in first person; all prior Bosch novels had utilized an omniscient third-person style.

Lost Light is the first novel set after Bosch retires from the LAPD at the end of the prior story. Having received his private investigator's license, Bosch investigates an old case concerning the murder of a production assistant on the set of a film. The case leads him back into contact with his ex-wife Eleanor Wish, who is now a professional poker player in Las Vegas, and Bosch learns at the end that he and Eleanor have a young daughter."

Harry was working on a murder investigation about a young woman who was murdered. She worked at a bank that was in the process of loaning a movie production company two million dollars to use as a prop for a film. Money was stolen, people within the heist were murdered, and the culprits were never apprehended. As a private investigator, Harry figures exactly what happened and who was responsible. 

I really liked the novel in that it was concerned with only one, big case. Sometimes Harry works on a couple of separate cases and sometimes this is a little confusing. However, I would read anything written by Michael Connelly.  

RICH MAN POOR MAN by Irwin Shaw

Finished Su 10/22/23

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read and there is no record of when I bought the book. 

In the novel 'THE COLOR OF LIGHT' by William Goldman one of the characters mentions that he likes the author Irwin Shaw and his college professor denigrates his choice. I like the writing of both authors and I think that they are very similar. 

Basically it is the story of three siblings:

Gretchen- the oldest and has an affair with a richer and older neighbor. She's frustrated and unlucky in love

 Tom- The youngest and a fighter and a demanding man. He goes outside of the law to get what he wants.

Rudolph- He was the brother that the parents felt was 'most likely to succeed'. He becomes the richest of the siblings.

From the book's review at Kirkus: 

"This ever and everlasting novel, proceeding with styleless ease in the most readable fashion possible, spans some twenty years and the three lives of the Jordache children from their divided beginnings to their unified endings in middle age. First Gretchen, from her slatternly start at 17 with a rich failure who to a degree is instrumental in all their lives. Gretchen goes on to New York and a lackluster marriage, to Los Angeles and an exciting one with a film director until his untimely death. Then there's Thomas, the insolent delinquent who disappears for years to become a prizefighter, whom Rudolph (he's next) helps unknowingly, and who repays his debt to society and to the family fully. And last Rudolph, handsome, cautious, acquisitive, who does become a rich man but a responsible one. . . . Mr. Shaw's story keeps going with a self-perpetuating interest and with the kind of professionalism that say Jerome Weidman manifests although forfeiting anything which qualifies at a literary level. But it should be eminently marketplaceable."

From the book's page at Wikipedia:

"The novel is a sprawling work, with over 600 pages, and covers many of the themes Shaw returns to again and again in all of his fiction – Americans living as expatriates in Europe, the McCarthy era, children trying to break away from the kind of life lived by their parents, social and political issues of capitalism, and the pain of relationships. On the very first page Shaw subtly telegraphs the sad ending of the story, in the same way that the first scene of a film will often quote the last scene.

Originally published as a short story in Playboy Magazine, it became an international bestseller when published as a novel. The bulk of the novel concerns the three children of German Americans Mary Pease and Axel Jordache – the eldest, Gretchen, the middle child, Rudolph, and the youngest, Thomas. It chronicles their experiences from the end of World War II until the late 1960s."

The novel was adapted into one of the first television miniseries for ABC television in 1976.  

THE STORY OF ARTHUR TRULUV by Elizabeth Berg

Finished Mo 10/9/23 

This is a hardback that Janny loaned me because I wanted to read this author. She reminds me of Anne Tyler and I like the book. 

A man lives alone and spends his afternoons at the cemetery visiting his dead wife. He becomes friends with a young woman who becomes pregnant. He takes her in and also a lonely woman who lives next door to him. It's a tender and heartwarming story. 

From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:

"In a small Missouri town, a widower finds solace by reaching out to other troubled souls.

Arthur Moses, 85, goes every day to the cemetery to eat his lunch at his late wife Nola’s grave. At night, he dines on whatever canned goods he can cobble together, tries to prevent his cat, Gordon, from running away, and dodges the busybody next door, Lucille, who keeps trying to entice him onto her front porch with her delicious baked goods. (This book depicts so many luscious-sounding confections it should come with its own FDA label.) One day at the cemetery, Arthur meets Maddy, a teenager with a nose ring, who hangs out there. They strike up a friendship born of mutual isolation, and she dubs him “Truluv” for his enduring devotion to Nola. As the point of view shifts among these three characters, we learn that Maddy, now a senior in high school, has been ostracized by her classmates. Her problems stem in part from the fact that her father, who raised her alone, irrationally blames her for her mother’s death in a car crash soon after her birth. A retired schoolteacher, Lucille, also in her 80s, never married because Frank, her high school true love, wed someone else. However, Frank has recently resurfaced and is trying to rekindle romance in their twilight years. Maddy’s social life consists of hookups with an older man she met at Wal-Mart, and one of these trysts leaves her pregnant. When her father urges her to terminate the pregnancy, she takes refuge at Arthur’s house. He and Lucille become Maddy's surrogate parents, and, by taking over housekeeping chores, Maddy helps them age in place. Both are childless and look forward eagerly to the birth of the baby, giving Maddy the unconditional moral and financial support she has always craved. The life-affirming messages are far from subtle, and the fine line between sensitivity and sentimentality is often breached.

Aims for profound but settles for pleasant."

I definitely want to read more by Elizabeth Berg.

THE CLOR OF LIGHT by William Goldman

 Finished Fr 10/6/23

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I bought at The Book House on Sa 9/11/93 and first finished on We 11/24/93.

The story of Chub Fuller. His nickname is not because he is overweight, but when he was an infant he had 'chubby cheeks' and the name stuck. I'm old enough to remember doing research without the internet and it seems nearly impossible, but everyone did it. 

The story is of a young man who is trying to be a writer. He gets sidetracked as a 'researcher' and this becomes his prime source of income for a time. 

He has a a good friend called 'Two Brew' Kitchel. His nickname came from a drinking game. You must drink 60 shots of beer in 60 minutes. He stopped after two shot glasses and his name stuck. The book seems to say that this is impossible, but I think this is very doable. Five twelve ounce beers in an hour doesn't seem that difficult and I know I've probably come close.

From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:

"Goldman, a first-class entertainer (Marathon Man, Magic), used to write slick, earnest, oddly false psychological novels; and this new book, about the ups and downs of young writer ""Chub"" Fuller, is an uneven return to that earlier style. In the novel's first third, Chub is an undergrad at Oberlin--discovering how to turn his troubled past (alcoholic father, unstable mother) into short stories, finding a mentor in crippled, flamboyantly brilliant classmate ""Two-Brew"" Kitchel. And since Two Brew's father just happens to be a top N.Y. publisher, Chub's stories soon appear in book form, with critical acclaim and paperback-bestsellerdom. But then, while working on a novel about his father, ever-bland Chub loses his creative energy, starts Manhattan drinking, tries Ohio teaching, makes money as a N.Y. researcher. He finds super-sex, love, and wedlock with his old dream-girl, divorcÉe B. J. Peacock--but B. J. is jealous of Chub's love for her little daughter Jesse, who dies in a feeble burst of deus-ex-melodrama. (Some material from The Thing of lt Is and Father's Day is recycled here.) Now 30-ish, Chub is on the verge of breakdown, surviving through a mutual support-system with aging, oddball super-model Bonita Kraus, a.k.a. ""The Bone."" Next, however, he finds super-super-sex with strange young Sandy, a TV addict who seems to have been involved with a psycho claiming to be the real Chub Fuller. So, for unpersuasive reasons, Chub now rediscovers his muse (""He was--stand back, world--writing again""), especially after Sandy commits suicide. . . or was it murder? As always, Goldman offers crisp details and dialogue, along with a few vivid episodes. (Chub's run-in with a psychotic, plagiarizing student; his research exploits.) Also, even if Chub's literary efforts sound more gimmicky than profound, some readers may enjoy the romanticized dramatization of life-material-into-fiction. Overall, however, Chub's soul-journey is superficial and murky, while the supporting cast is defined largely by quirks and nicknames; and, though there's enough cuteness and professional gloss to engage an audience at the start, this ends up as a mildly pretentious, very sentimental, unsatisfying rehash of familiar Goldman themes--from malebonding and childhood psychology to the-writer-as-hero/victim." 

In the book the author Irwin Shaw is seen as a hack writer and Chub defends his work. I found two books by Shaw on the shelves and I'm going to read them.