THE BIG MONEY by John Dos Passos

 Finished We 5/7/25

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read, and I'm so glad that I kept it around. This was not an easy read, but well worth the effort.

This is the third and final part of a trilogy, but it is fine as a 'stand alone'. 

From AI Mode:

""The Big Money" is the third and final novel in John Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy, published in 1936. It completes the trilogy's sweeping portrait of American society in the early 20th century, focusing on the Roaring Twenties and the events leading up to the Great Depression. 

Here's a review of the key aspects of "The Big Money":

1. Narrative Style and Structure:

Experimental Modernist: Like the other novels in the trilogy, "The Big Money" utilizes a distinctive modernist style, incorporating techniques like stream of consciousness, montage, and collage.

Fragmented Narrative: Dos Passos interweaves fictional character narratives with "Newsreels" (collections of headlines, popular song lyrics, and snippets of news), "Camera Eye" sections (autobiographical passages), and biographies of prominent figures of the era.

Panoramic View: This fragmented, multi-layered approach creates a panoramic and dynamic picture of American society, reflecting the rapid changes and cultural clashes of the time. 

2. Themes and Social Commentary:

The American Dream: The novel explores the pursuit and disillusionment of the American Dream in the 1920s, revealing the destructive effects of unchecked ambition and materialism.

Social Injustice and Inequality: Dos Passos critiques the vast disparities between the rich and the poor, and the social injustices prevalent in the era of industrialization and economic boom.

The Rise of Consumer Culture and Mass Media: The novel depicts the growing influence of mass media and consumer culture on American society, highlighting the changing values and priorities of the time.

Loss of Individuality: Some critics argue that the novel portrays how individuals can be lost or subsumed within the larger forces of capitalism and societal pressures. 

3. Characters:

Diverse Cast: Dos Passos presents a wide array of characters from different social classes and backgrounds, including ambitious entrepreneurs, struggling workers, artists, and political activists.

Character Studies: The novel delves into the lives and experiences of these characters, revealing their personal struggles, ambitions, and disillusionments as they navigate a rapidly changing America.

Representative Figures: Some characters can be seen as representative figures embodying different aspects of the American experience during the 1920s, such as the pursuit of wealth, the struggle for social justice, or the allure of fame. 

4. Historical Context:

The Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression: The novel vividly depicts the economic boom and social changes of the Roaring Twenties, followed by the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression.

Political and Social Turmoil: The book captures the political and social tensions of the era, including labor unrest, the rise of radical movements, and the anxieties surrounding social change. 

5. Critical Reception:

Praised for Scope and Ambition: "The Big Money" and the U.S.A. trilogy as a whole have been lauded for their sweeping portrayal of American society and their innovative narrative techniques.

Critiques of Style: Some readers and critics have found Dos Passos's fragmented style challenging or even confusing, according to one customer review on Amazon.com.

Enduring Relevance: Despite some criticisms, "The Big Money" remains a significant work of American literature, offering valuable insights into the complexities of the American experience and the enduring tensions between individual aspirations and societal forces. 

In conclusion, "The Big Money" is a complex and ambitious novel that provides a multifaceted and critical look at American society during a pivotal period in its history. Its innovative narrative style and its exploration of enduring themes make it a compelling and thought-provoking read."

From Wikipedia 'Main Characters'

" Mac (Fainy McCreary) – A wandering printer, train-hopping newspaperman, and crusader for the working man

Janey Williams – A young stenographer from Washington, D.C. (assistant to Moorehouse)

Eleanor Stoddard – A cold, haughty young social climber

J. Ward Moorehouse – A slick, influential public relations man

Charley Anderson – A gullible, good-natured mechanic and flying ace

Joe Williams – A rugged, slow-witted sailor, brother of Janey Williams

Richard Ellsworth Savage – A Harvard graduate, employee of Moorehouse

Daughter (Anne Elizabeth Trent) – A spirited Texas belle and volunteer nurse

Eveline Hutchins – Artist and designer, Eleanor's long-time friend and rival

Ben Compton – A law student and labor activist/revolutionary

Mary French – Dedicated labor activist and journalist

Margo Dowling – Attractive, cagey and adventurous, eventually a Hollywood actress"

VALIS by PK Dick

 Refinished Su 4/27/25

I think I have read this novel a few times over the years and in this edition of the book I 'Refamiliarized' myself with the novel on Mo 11/9/09. 

It's a classic and I'll always come back to it. There's always something different to wonder about. 

A link to an excellent description of the novel:

https://philipdick.com/literary-criticism/reviews/review-by-ian-mathers-valis-1981/

From 'readingproject.neocities.org'

"By the time I finished reading this book I wasn’t sure what kind of ‘reality’ was meant to lay beneath the narrative. Valis is a mess, a hybrid book that is philosophical, religious and science fiction, all happening at once. And make no mistake. The problem here isn’t a desire to pin a genre tag to this book. By the end, all you can really be sure is that the narrator doesn’t have a firm grip on reality.

This realisation is heightened by the knowledge that the narrator is a fictionalised version of Philip K. Dick, himself. Although not too fictional. Dick makes references to several of his own books throughout the text, his character friends refer to his books and people he knows in Hollywood. And it appears, from the author information at the back of my copy, that this novel was one of several novels Dick wrote as he tried to cope with a ‘breakdown’ he suffered in March 1974; the exact month Dick’s narrator suffers a breakdown.

The narrative voice is further complicated by the fact that Philip K. Dick narrates much of the novel through his alter ego, Horselover Fat, a man who appears to be a figment of his deranged imagination, yet seems to work independently of him in the real world in different parts of the book.

What caused this mental collapse? Several reasons are given: the breakup with his wife; the attempted suicide of a friend; the death of another friend to cancer. But most curious, and most relevant to the story, is the pink beam of light Horselover/Phil has fired in to his eyes in March 1974, giving him access to all sorts of information he couldn’t possibly have known. Where did it come from? What was it exactly? He doesn’t know. But the event sets off a philosophical and religious search as he writes a 300,000 word exegeses on God and Gnosticism, tied together through interfaith references and mythical allusions. Horselover’s (Phil’s) theorising is a messy hodgepodge of beliefs, suppositions and theorising.

For this reason the book seemed to be more a product of the counter culture of the sixties and seventies than inspired by traditional science fiction concerns. This is a book related to the drug experimentations of the period, the hallucinations that that engendered, as well as the willingness to embrace alternative systems of thought in a blend of east and west, modern and ancient, that at least made some sense of the assertion in the novel, more reminiscent of sci-fi writing, that time doesn’t exist.

At this point I was thinking that this was a very different kind of book than any other Dick book I have read. This didn’t feel like Science Fiction. It was about mental illness and a religious search.

Then, enter VALIS. Valis is an acronym for ‘Vast Active Living Intelligence System’. It’s at this point that the plot takes a turn via a most unlikely means, a Hollywood film. Horselover’s complex system of beliefs seem to be confirmed through the likely presence of Valis, and his friends begin to believe as well, leading them on a quest that might just bring them face to face with the meaning of everything.

It’s hard to say much more about the book beyond this without risking giving things away to anyone who is interested. All I can say is that I found the book very uneven. At times I was fascinated, at other times bored. The story takes quite a while to get going, and I would count myself as a fairly patient reader. Sometimes the narrative flows well, but then it gets bogged down in religious exegesis. As someone who finds religious proselytising a little creepy, this was a bit tedious, and made more so because I felt Dick never really revealed the true significance he placed on this aspect of the story. As someone a religious person would call an atheist, I had no choice but to accept some of this for the sake of the story, and any dismissal Dick/Horselover makes of the system of belief he advocates is small and questionable.

In the end, the one thing I felt I could be sure of, was the constant refrain of the book; that the universe is irrational, as much as the characters and much of the narrative in the book is. I would recommend much of Philip K. Dick’s writing to anyone looking for older science fiction, but I feel that this book would try the patience of many people."

POLYMATH by John Brunner

 Refinished We 4/23/25

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I first finished on Mo 2/15/16. I liked it then, and the second time around I liked it even more.

It's really about two different styles of managing people. One faction believes in 'the military way' and the other is a more relaxed and reflective way of governing. 

A 'polymath' is a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning. In the novel there is a character who is a 'polymath on steroids'. He has been scientifically altered to become a hybrid human who has an unbelievable array of abilities. 

From the book's description at Amazon: "Colonising a new planet requires much more than just settling on a newly discovered island of Old Earth. New planets were different in thousands of ways, different from Earth and from each other. Any of those differences could mean death and disaster to a human settlement. When a ship filled with refugees from a cosmic catastrophe crash-landed on such an unmapped world, their outlook was precarious. Their ship was lost, salvage had been minor, and everything came to depend on one bright young man accidentally among them. He was a trainee planet-builder. It would have been his job to foresee all the problems necessary to set up a safe home for humanity. But the problem was that he was a mere student - and he had been studying the wrong planet. (First published 1974)". 

From 'strangerthanf.com'

"Without warning, the sun of the planet Zarathustra goes nova. There is no time to evacuate, but a few spaceships on the night side of the planet are able to lift off and--by driving at maximum speed--outrun the shock wave of the explosion. Driven far beyond charted space, beyond communication range with civilization, they have no hope of rescue. Each ship puts down on the first habitable planet it can find, hoping to make a life there.

On one inviting planet, two ships make crash landings. One lands on the coast near a river delta; the other sets down in the interior highlands. During the bitter winter, the group on the coast lose their radio antenna and lose contact with the other survivors. When spring begins, they give the others up for dead and settle down to the task of building a permanent community on their new world.

The Zarathustra refugees are unqualified, though. Zarathustra was an advanced, automated planet, and the people have no experience with the outdoors or with manual labor. The two people who reveal themselves as most qualified are an amateur historian who has some book knowledge of old machines, and a hobbyist who figures out how to turn that knowledge into practice.

On the leadership side of things, the situation is even worse. Captain Arbogast acted as ruler during the winter, but the distress at losing his ship eventually overwhelms him; he has a mental breakdown. Nanseltine, a continental manager back on Zarathustra, has no useful skills whatsoever, but is intent on succeeding Arbogast. The best qualified leader is a young man named Lex, whose polymath training gives him special insight. Among the women, no qualified leaders emerge. Worse, the interpersonal issues come to a head when the youngest refugee, a girl named Naline, develops an unhealthy sexual fixation on Delvia. The other women turn against Delvia because of the callous way she appears to toy with Naline.

Lex, with his polymath training, is the only hope the survivors have. As a polymath, he is specifically trained--and augmented physically--to coordinate the terraforming and colonization of a virgin planet. However, this planet is not the planet he has trained for; further, he has not finished polymath training. Nevertheless, he must adapt to the planet, hone his leadership skills, and forge a lasting community.

And he must fight a war against the survivors from the interior, whose captain has instituted a military dictatorship, enslaved his crew and passengers, and is now eyeing the resources of the coastal survivor group."

TRAPPED by Greg Iles

 Finished Su 4/20/25

A paperback that Janny loaned to me.

 From Google AI:

""Trapped" by Greg Iles is generally considered a thrilling but ultimately unsatisfying novel. It starts strong with a captivating premise about a seemingly perfect family facing a nightmare kidnapping, but many reviewers find the ending contrived and implausible, diminishing the overall impact. 

Strengths:

Intriguing premise:

The novel begins with a compelling scenario of a family targeted by a con man and psychopath, creating suspense and a sense of impending doom.

Suspenseful atmosphere:

Iles builds a tense atmosphere and keeps readers on the edge of their seats with the escalating threats and twists.

Character development:

While the main focus is on the suspense, the characters of Will, Karen, and their daughter are well-developed and relatable. 

Weaknesses:

Contrived and implausible ending:

Many reviewers criticize the ending as being too far-fetched and lacking in realism, which ruins the overall effect. 

Deus ex machina resolution:

The ending relies heavily on a deus ex machina, a sudden and unexpected resolution, which feels forced and unsatisfying. 

Potentially boring in parts:

While the beginning is engaging, some reviewers found the story to become tedious and less captivating as it progressed, according to an Amazon review." 

THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling

 Finished Th 4/17/25

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read and I bought it on Su 10/31/04. This was a highly rated novel and very important within the 'Steam Punk' movement. 

I really liked the book, but it was no easy read. Sections of the novel were like a trip to the nineteenth century and some of it was just too hard to follow. The scenes where men are on the Thames river during 'The Big Stink' were very memorable. 

Charles Babbage was a real person who 'invented' computer science {The Analytic Engine} in the early 1800's.  

From a review by Robert Sawyer:

"The Difference Engine belongs to that sub-genre of Science Fiction known as the alternative-history story. It assumes a divergence in the past between the way things did go and the way things might have gone.

In this case, the hinge is the work of Charles Babbage (1792-1871). In our history, Babbage, a British mathematician, came up with the idea for a "difference engine" — a mechanical computer — but died without ever having built one. In Gibson's and Sterling's world, Babbage does build his computer, and England sees the industrial revolution and the information revolution simultaneously.

Gibson, who lives in Vancouver, won the Hugo and Nebula awards for his 1984 novel Neuromancer. That novel firmly established the "cyberpunk" school of SF — gritty, technophillic, slang-rich tales of the near-future. Sterling, a Texan, although not as big a name in SF, was a natural collaborator for Gibson, having written the cyberpunk novel Islands in the Net and edited Mirrorshades, the definitive anthology of cyberpunk short stories.

We should laud them for not pooling their talents to simply do another iteration of cyberpunk. What they've produced here is something completely new for both of them, and a work, I suspect, that neither could have done on his own.

That said, in significant ways, the final product is flawed. It posits a series of mysteries, none of which are resolved to the reader's satisfaction. First, we're led a merry chase after a deck of stolen French computer cards. But about halfway through this plot line peters out without the cards ever really amounting to much.

Next, we keep hearing of a mysterious antagonist who goes by the code-name "Captain Swing." One naturally assumes that Swing's true identity will be a key revelation, but we never find out who he is.

Finally, in an intriguing device, portions of the book are narrated by an unidentified omniscience, apparently looking over data from the year 1855. One guesses early on that this might be an intelligent computer — perhaps the often-referred-to, but never-seen Grand Napoleon, a super-powerful French ordinateur. But Gibson and Sterling leave the mystery of the storyteller's identity as an exercise for the reader.

In fact, the reader can get lots of exercise with this book. An enormous familiarity with things Victorian is assumed, making for frequent trips to the encyclopedia to decipher where the novel's timeline diverges from our own (quickly now: was the real London paralyzed by a smog inversion layer in the summer of 1855?).

Almost every character in the book is a real person, or is taken from Victorian pop literature. Dandy Mick, who figures prominently in the book's opening, is borrowed from a Disraeli novel, and Byron, Darwin, and Disraeli himself all play roles — although roles different from those they had in our timeline. Byron is prime minister, Darwin a member of the House of Lords, and Disraeli remains a seedy pulp writer throughout his days.

Those willing to grant two master writers a large dollop of poetic license will enjoy the hauntingly strange landscape, filled with steam-propelled cars, 19th-century credit cards, and "clackers" — the computer hackers of the day (taking their name from the sound made by paper cards moving through the brasswork of the steam-driven computers).

Gibson and Sterling range over a surprising variety of topics, including British Columbia's Burgess Shale and its fantastic array of fossil life forms; a debate between the uniformitarian and catastrophic schools of geology; the rise of communism in New York; Japanese robot women with springs made of whalebone; and fascinating "kinotrope" shows, the steam-computer-driven 19th-century equivalent of the big animated display boards found in today's sporting arenas. (In the world of The Difference Engine, poet John Keats has found his niche as a master programmer of kinotrope displays.)

The book's plot, of which there's surprisingly little, is muddled, but then this is not a story about getting from point A to point B. Rather, it's an immersion in a fascinating, wholly realized milieu.

The authors do indulge themselves at times. There's a drawn-out sex interlude that reads like a letter to some 19th century edition of Penthouse. And the final chapter is stuffed with random historical notes and ersatz press clippings, filling in background details that should more appropriately have been woven into the body of the text.

Still, the depth of imagining is magnificent. No one would call The Difference Engine a fun book, but it is a challenging work, and bound to generate much controversy."

I think the book is challenging, however it was well worth the effort. Although the final section I just skimmed because it dealt with the fictional historical timeline within the novel. Shouldn't that have come first? 

THE TRISTAN BETRAYAL by Robert Ludlum

Finished Mo 4/7/25

This is a paperback that I recently bought at Amazon (Dec 2024).

I found this out at Wikipedia:

"The Tristan Betrayal is a novel by Robert Ludlum, published posthumously in 2003. Ludlum wrote an outline shortly before his death. The novel itself was written by a ghostwriter." Maybe this was why I liked it so much?

A terrific love story- "The Spy & The Ballerina". In the early part of WWII she smuggles false documents to the Nazis that the show Russian defenses are paper thin. This is a lie and entices Hitler to invade Russia and he is forced into a '2-front' war that he ultimately loses. 

Summary from Wikipedia:

"In the fall of 1940, the Nazis are at the height of their power – France is occupied, Britain is enduring the Blitz and is under constant threat of invasion, America is neutral, and Russia is in an uneasy alliance with Germany.

In this dark time, Stephen Metcalfe is living the high life in occupied Paris. The younger son of a prominent American family, Metcalfe is a handsome young man who is a notable guest at all the best parties, has been romantically linked to the elite's most desirable women, and is in great demand in the upper echelons of Paris society. He is also a minor asset in the U.S.'s secret intelligence forces in Europe, cavalierly playing The Great Game like so many socially connected young men before him. However, what has been largely an amusing game becomes deadly serious – the spy network he was a part of is suddenly dismantled in the midst of war-torn Europe and he is left without a contact, actual orders, or a contingency plan.

With no one else in place, it falls to Metcalfe to instigate a bold plan that may be the only hope for the quickly dwindling remains of the free world. Using his family's connections and relying on his own devices, he travels to wartime Moscow to find and possibly betray a former lover – a fiery ballerina whose own loyalties are in question – in a delicate dance that could destroy all he loves and honors. With his opponents closing in on him and the war itself rapidly approaching an irreversible crisis point, Stephen Metcalfe faces both a difficult task and an impossible decision, where success will have unimaginable consequences far into the future and failure is unthinkable."  

THE WASP FACTORY by Iain Banks

Finished Sa 3/29/25

This is a trade paperback that I got on Amazon after reading that it was one of Warren Zevon's favorite novels. 

A first person narration by a very, very unreliable narrator.

Frankie is a girl!!! That was the fantastic reveal and I didn't see that coming.

Catapult is an English word for slingshot

Frankie kills three people; a friend (by snake bite) his brother (in an explosion), a young girl (who he ties to a kite and she flies away).

The plot from Wikipedia:

"The story is told from the perspective of 16-year-old Frank Cauldhame. Frank lives with his father on a small island in rural Scotland, and he has not seen his mother in many years. There is no official record of his birth, meaning his existence is largely unknown.

Frank occupies his time with rituals, building dams, and maintaining an array of weapons (a small catapult, pipe bombs, and a crude flamethrower) for killing small animals around the island. He takes long walks to patrol the island and occasionally gets drunk with his only friend, a dwarf. Otherwise, Frank has almost no contact with the outside world. He's haunted by the memory of a dog attack during his youth, which resulted in the loss of his genitalia. He resents others for his impotence, particularly women. This is in part due to the mauling coinciding with the last time he saw his mother, who had come back to give birth to his younger brother, and left immediately afterward.

Frank's older brother, Eric, escapes from a psychiatric institution, having been arrested some years prior for arson and terrorising the local children by force-feeding them live maggots. Eric often calls him from a pay-phone to inform Frank of his progress back to the island. Eric is extremely erratic; their conversations end badly, with Eric exploding in fits of rage. However, it's clear Frank loves his brother.

The Wasp Factory is a mechanism invented by Frank, consisting of a huge clock face, salvaged from the local dump, encased in a glass box. Behind each of the 12 numerals is a trap that leads to a different ritual death (such as burning, crushing, or drowning in Frank's urine) for the wasp that Frank puts into it via the hole at the centre. Frank believes the death "chosen" by the wasp predicts something about the future. The Factory is in the house's loft, which Frank's father cannot access because of a leg injury. There are also “Sacrifice Poles” constructed by Frank. The corpses of animals, such as mice that he has killed, are placed onto the poles for the purpose of attracting birds which will fly away and alert Frank of anybody approaching the island.

It's revealed that when Frank was much younger, he killed three of his relatives: two cousins and his younger half-brother. He also exhumed the skull of the dog that castrated him, and uses it as part of his rituals. Eric is described as having been extremely sensitive before the incident that drove him mad: a tragic case of neglect at the hospital where Eric was a volunteer when studying to become a doctor. While attempting to feed a brain-damaged newborn with acalvaria, Eric notes how the child is unresponsive and smiling, despite usually appearing expressionless. The child's skull is held together by a metal plate over his head. Eric checks underneath the plate to find the child's exposed brain tissue infested and being consumed by day-old maggots.

Frank's father is distant and spends most of his time in his study, which he keeps locked at all times. Frank longs to know what is inside. He is used to being lied to by his father, who seemingly does it purely for his own amusement. At the end of the novel, Frank is alerted of Eric's return when he sees a dog that has been burned alive and discovers Eric's campsite. This knowledge incites Frank's father to get drunk before forgetting to conceal the keys to his study, where Frank discovers male hormone drugs, tampons, and what appears to be the remains of his own genitals in a jar. He assumes that his findings mean that his father is actually female. After disrobing his father at knifepoint, Frank discovers this is not the case. At the same time, Eric arrives. During the ensuing confrontation, Eric attempts to destroy the house by setting light to the large stock of cordite kept in the cellar. Frank stops him, and Eric runs into the distance.

Frank's father explains that it was Frank who was born a female; the hormones had been fed to him by his father since the dog attack in an experiment to see whether Frank would transition from female to male. The remains of his genitals were fake, fashioned from wax as evidence in case Frank ever questioned his father's story. It is suggested that his father's reasoning for doing this was to distance himself from the women he felt had ruined his life. In the end, Frank finds Eric, half asleep. He sits with him and considers his life up to this point and whether he should leave the island."

SS- GB by Len Deighton

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I finished on We 6/1/and sometime in the 90's.

I refinished Fr 3/28/25 and I really enjoyed the book. It's a Police Procedural set in 1941 where Hitler won and Britain has been invaded. 

Douglas Archer- a hot young detective ('Archer of The Yard') who must deal with his English superiors and also his German bosses. The German army generals and the detectives within the SS vie for control of the British social order. 

A murder investigation reveals the race to develop a nuclear bomb. 

From Goodreads:

"The King is a hostage in the tower, the Queen and Princesses have fled to Australia, Churchill has been executed by a firing squad, Englishmen are being deported to work in German factories and the dreaded SS is in charge of Scotland Yard. London is in shock. The very look of daily life is a walking nightmare of German uniforms, artifacts, regulations. There are collaborators. There are profiteers. But there are others working in hope, in secret, and desperate danger, against the invader. And still others are living strangely ambiguous lives – none more so than Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer ("Archer of the yard" as the press like to call him), trying to maintain a peculiarly, almost sacredly, British institution under a Nazi chief. Archer has started work on what seems, at first, a routine murder case. But suddenly an SS Standartenführer from Himmler's personal staff flies in from Berlin to supervise the investigation, and Archer is plunged deep into an espionage battle for which he is completely unprepared, and where the stakes are incredibly high. "We’re dealing with something that could prove so deadly that not even the Black Death would compare with the consequences", the SS man tells him.

Setting forth on a tight rope trail of violence, betrayal and danger, Archer moves into worlds within worlds of intrigue. The British resistance, wealthy collaborators, high-level scientists, German army and SS factions and vicious rivalry, a beautiful American reporter on assignment for the still-neutral papers back home – these are the players that Deighton's treacherously shifting drama, as it races toward its chattering climax that involves the fate of the King, and of England itself.

SS–GB is fascinating in its premise, utterly authentic and convincing in its detail. It is the most gripping novel we have had from the author of The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, and Bomber. Already, in England, it has become Len Deighton's greatest best seller."

GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn

 Refinished Mo 3/17/25

This is one of my ancient trade paperbacks that I had read (and loved) a couple of times. The movie is even excellent.

A classic tale of 'unreliable narrators'. Is 'Amazing Amy' the true villian or is it her hapless husband, Nick?

In the end they are both trapped in a loveless marriage, but they get to 'act the part'. Maybe that will be good enough. 

From The Guardian:

"Gone Girl packs a winning formula, by frightening, enchanting, disturbing and intriguing its readers all at once. Gillian Flynn, with this novel, has proven that she deserves to be crowned the Queen of plot twists. Although this is a book that takes its own sweet time to pick up the pace and become the juicy thriller you go in anticipating, it’s definitely worth the wait and the bored page turning.

Flynn creates the most bizarre, complex characters (a large majority of which seem to have escaped from asylums for the mentally insane) that bounce off the page and seem so scarily real. What is arguably Gillian Flynn’s greatest strength as an author lies in her ability to change the way her readers perceive her protagonists. Taking one of the main characters, Nick, as an example – I started off by feeling sorry for his unemployment and empathised with his panic and fear as his wife goes missing, went on to loathe him from the bottom of my heart and towards the end of the novel, feel absolutely terrible for him, because he lives in a prison he cannot escape from. The technique used by the author, in telling the story from multiple narratives, is both a clever and wickedly effective one; the novel wouldn’t have been worth half of what it is had it been told from the perspective of only one of the two protagonists."

Link to the book's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_Girl_(novel)

THE LATHE OF HEAVEN by Ursula Le Guin

 Finished Sa 3/9/25

This was part of a trilogy (3 novels in one book) that I probably bought at 'Oversized Paperback' (?) when I was a member years ago. I never read any of the books, but I'm glad that I finally got a chance to read this one. However, I thought that this was the novel about 'gender fluidity', but that was Le Guin's novel, 'THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS'. I want to buy that novel for my Kindle. 

In a nutshell the novel is about George Orr. He is a man who can change reality with his dreams. He is sent to a therapist because he was over using his drug allowance. He was doing this to keep from dreaming. However, his psychiatrist realizes that he can change reality 'for the better' while he hypnotises George. You realize that when you change one strand of reality that it affects all of the others. 

A delightful novel and I want to read a whole lot more by Le Guin. She is probably the closest author to write in the quirky style of Philip K. Dick.

This is the link to an excellent recap of the novel at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lathe_of_Heaven

A WALLK ON THE WILD SIDE by Nelson Algren

 Finished Tu 3/4/25

This was one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read. However, I'm very glad that I made time to read this very compelling novel.

It's the story of Dove Linkhorn who is a sixteen year old 'nonconformist' from Texas who relocates to the sleaze of New Orleans. And, the reader is treated to a view of a whole cast of colorful & gritty characters. The novel is set in 1931 and at the height of the Great American Depression. 

'Potaguaya'- is the Spanish word for cannabis and means 'the drink of grief'. Who's kidding who?

A link to the book's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Walk_on_the_Wild_Side

From chasingbawa.com:

"A Walk on the Wild Side follows in the footsteps of 16 year old, illiterate Dove Linkhorn as he leaves Texas and his preacher father and drunk brother behind to better himself. In the first part, we meet Dove as he struggles to earn a few dollars working for and in turn being taught how to read by the much older and devout Terasina, the owner of the local chili parlour. Theirs is a short and bittersweet romance quickly ruined by pride, misunderstanding and violence, and Dove leaves Texas to find a better life for himself. On his journey to New Orleans, Dove encounters a whole slew of characters, the forgotten, the impoverished and the starving all trying to survive, including Kitty, a young, street smart orphan trying to pass herself off as a boy. Dove later falls in with a couple of bums as he learns to make some money as a salesman. But somehow, no matter how much he makes, he always seems to drift back to the lower echelons of society where the drugs and booze are plenty but there’s never enough money.

In New Orleans he meets the pimps and prostitutes who seem to define our image of 1930s New Orleans. Dove is once again sucked into this world forming tentative alliances and is recruited as a stud to deflower ‘virgins’, a job in which he excels. He runs off with Hallie, the only prostitute who hasn’t surrendered completely but returns when she leaves him. And when he returns, he is confronted by Hallie’s lover, lonely and angry Legless Schmidt whose dreams of being the strongest man in America was shattered by a drunken fall near a moving train, and is beaten almost to death. And we come back full circle as Dove returns once more to his hometown, a broken man, but looking for the one person he hurt but cannot forget.

Algren’s novel really surprised me. Considering the subject matter, I was expecting a gritty, dark and depressing book all about the lower dregs of society, especially during the Depression when the numbers swelled exponentially. But Algren’s prose is magical because he tells his tale in a poetic and very beautiful language. So although you are aware of the seedy nature of New Orleans, the bitter, empty lives of the poor and the sordid exploitation of women, you can’t but believe in the hopes that these characters have and applaud how they keep on going even though their lives are so hard. That’s a pretty mean feat to accomplish. If this book was written now, it would probably be too graphic and would leave you with a sour taste in your mouth."

DARK SEEKER by K.W. Jeter

Finished Tu 2/25/25

This was one of my ancient paperbacks that I noticed on the shelf when I was reading 'BLADE RUNNER 2'  which was written by Jeter.

First finished Fr 5/30/08 and this was one of the last books that I read at work as the dispatcher. 

The novel concerns a group similar to The Manson Family. They were a gang of killers that 'linked' by taking a drug that allows users to 'blend with the night'. Mike Tyler was a member and he's trying to get back into the gang to find his son who might still be alive. It's kind of a let down because in the end, it was only a doll. I'm not sure what it all means, but it was a spooky read. 

From the internet:

"The story involves a group of researchers who dabble with an experimental drug, allowing them to mesh consciousnesses, with a view to applications in battlefield situations, where the formation of a gestalt-mind between combatants would be of practical value. However, the drug also releases the darkest, innermost tendencies of those taking it, pushing them towards acts of depravity and wanton destruction. The action takes place some years after the experiments, when the researchers are on heavily-regulated prophylactic chemical inhibitors and have been re-located, found ‘Not Guilty by reason of Insanity’, after a series of horrific murders which the drug – a discrete entity they refer to as ‘the Host’ - forced them to commit.

We follow Mike Tyler, living in Los Angeles with his nurse girlfriend Stephanie and her son Eddy, idly testing the boundaries of the limits which his medication places upon him, bridling against the regimen but seeing how far he can go without it. Things are dull but otherwise fine, until he receives a call from his former wife Linda who calls him to say that ‘Slide’ - an old criminal associate of theirs and part of the experiment from the research days – has taken their child Bryan away from her, the child that Mike thought was dead.

From here on, the pace is unrelenting as Mike tries to find his son, keeping at bay the semi-retired detective Kinross, who has a crusade against the researchers, and the cash-poor journalist Bedell, who squandered a mint made from his book about the experiment and its crimes, and who has a sample of the drug stashed in his house. On top of this, Mike has to balance his re-surfaced hysterical ex-wife and his new love and her child, whilst trawling through the wreckage of his past and his old – very damaged – associates to try and find the Host-addicted Slide, before something horrible happens to the son he thought he’d never see again."

OPEN HOUSE by Elizabeth Berg

 Finished Th 2/20/25

This is a hardback that Janny loaned to me. 

It's a 'Decorous Domestic Dramedy'. 

A woman in an unfufilling marriage is abandoned by her husband. She desperately wants him back and she takes in roomates to help keep her house and to fill the void in her life. In the end, her husband wants her back, but she decides she wants her 'new' life. 

The theme of 'roomates' seemed familiar and I think I've read this before, but it was well worth a second look.

From Kirkus Reviews:

"he eighth effortless novel from soft-pedaling specialist Berg (Until the Real Thing Comes Along, 1999, etc.) is an emotional slurpee/comedy featuring the newly separated mother of a near-teenaged son who finds the man of her dreams in spite of herself.

What's a woman to do after her husband of 20 years packs a bag and walks out? Take a page from Martha Stewart's book, apparently, by getting dressed to the nines, making an elegant breakfast, and then trying to make the kid go along with the charade. Unfortunately for Samantha Morrow, she isn't Martha Stewart, and her son Travis is unflinchingly frank. So Sam goes to Tiffany's and writes a $12,000 check for silver flatware instead, whereupon her husband, David, takes all the money out of their joint account, and she has to start renting out rooms. The first boarder to move in is the mother of her grocery store's cashier, a sweet, capable lady who comes complete with a devoted boyfriend—and the hulk named King who moved her in is a sweetie, too. So what if the woman snores and keeps Travis awake? He and Sam adjust, and everything would be fine if she didn't keep hoping David would come back. But he has the good life and a girlfriend, while she's started temping (on King's recommendation) and dating (at her mother's insistence), the latter with disastrous results. The little old lady marries her boyfriend, another renter proves clinically depressed, and Sam has trouble adjusting to the working life. Even a distress call to Martha Stewart's 800 number doesn't help. Then, when she least expects it, love is in the air.

Skillfully crafted, with a fluidity and snap that will delight Berg's fans but, when all is said and done, a distressingly familiar story."  

The heroine of the story is Samantha (Sam) and she has a miscarriage on the toilet. She wanted to bury the fetus but was unable to keep it on the spoon so she had to flush. That was an indelible image!!!

I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD: The Dirty Life And Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon

 Finished Mo 2/17/25

I bought this as an ebook on Kindle. It's a fantastic look at the life of a madman and the interviews were compiled by his ex-wife. She was one of the few people who had some kind of control over this wild & crazy singer/song writer. 

Warren told his adult son to get rid of his porn collection. The son thought he meant commercially bought adult films, but no. These were films that Warren had made with other women over the course of his life. 

When he was given the death sentence of lung cancer, he went back to drinking and drugging. Why not?

From 'A Greenman Review.com':

"The Warren Zevon who emerges from these pages is even more of an enigma than he would appear to be just from listening to his songs. And that’s saying a lot for a man who wrote songs that included “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” about a ghostly mercenary who takes revenge on those who double-crossed him; “Excitable Boy,” about a demented young serial killer; “Mohammed’s Radio,” about low-lifes in L.A.; and “My Shit’s Fucked Up” and “Life’ll Kill Ya” about the perils of facing one’s own mortality.

It should come as no surprise that Warren Zevon was one fucked-up dude. But the extent of his weirdness is, at times, staggering. It’s nearly impossible to even draw up a rough outline of his life, so multi-faceted and bizarre it was. The son of a reticent Mormon and an even more shadowy Jewish mobster, Zevon grew up in California in the ’50s and ’60s. He showed musical talent from the start, considered a career in classical piano, and spent some time in the California home of Igor Stravinsky. He was also a serious reader and writer, and seemed to know from an early age that he’d live or die as an artist.

He was on the fringes of the California folk-rock scene that included The Turtles, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne. He toured and played with The Everly Brothers. He early on discovered alcohol and drugs, and always used them to excess. There were many hard years in the early 1970s, when he and Crystal lived hand to mouth, in other people’s homes, and for a time in a Spanish resort town. But he continued to believe in himself and to work on his songcraft, and eventually had his first album produced by Jackson Browne. It was his second album, which included his most popular hit “Werewolves of London,” that made him the most money and brought him briefly to the public’s attention. It also increased his intake of intoxicants and began a long slide, or series of slides, that lasted until he finally got sober in the early 1980s. His career never recovered, though, his albums selling progressively fewer, until his final, The Wind, recorded as he was under a death sentence from lung cancer, which won several Grammys.

In addition to his substance abuse, Zevon was a sex addict and a self-diagnosed victim of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was constitutionally unable to be monogamous. He was for most of his life barely a presence in the lives of his two children (by different mothers). He was bizarrely superstitious. He abused those closest to him, personally and professionally. But he was also highly regarded by nearly everybody who knew him, most of whom seemed to have felt it was worth putting up with his flaws.

When writers like Stephen King, Carl Hiaasen and Gore Vidal, and musicians like David Crosby, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan all refer to the man as a genius, you have to take him seriously. He could be darkly hilarious and deeply sentimental, sometimes within the same breath. He saw through society’s facades and wrote songs about the dirty underbelly that were by turns wry, poignant and irreverent. He laughed in the face of death, and cried on the shoulders of former lovers.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead isn’t a perfect book. But it’s a compelling portrait of a difficult, multi-faceted, contradictory and deeply creative human being. Highly recommended."

LOOKING BACKWARD by Edward Bellamy

 Finished Su 2/9/25

This is one of my ancient paperbacks and it was a fantastic read. It's a crazy SciFi tale that was written in 1887 and is a profile of Socialism wrapped in a Time Travel tale.

From 'Happily Writing.com':

"To summarize the beginning, when a 19th century man named Julian West awakes to find himself in the 21st century under the care of a family in Boston, he begins to explore, question and discuss the changes he sees with the family members. The first and most obvious change he notices from an upper balcony of a three-story home is that the city is obviously now prosperous, full of fine houses, open squares filled with trees, statues and fountains, and public buildings of colossal size and architectural grandeur.

As he questions his host, he learns that the government now operates many locations of the exact same stores for people to obtain food and other consumables. They do not use money; instead, they use a “credit card”. The funds backing the credit card are provided by the government and are distributed equally to every citizen. Employment, then, is not the source of one’s income and buying power; it is each person’s contribution to the cogs of the wheel running an orderly society.

Some refer to this book as utopian, some call the principles in the book socialist or Marxist, many note that it was one of the most popular, important books of its day. According to SparticusEducational.com, the novel was highly successful and sold over 1,000,000 copies. It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur.

As Bellamy’s biographer, Franklin Rosemont, has pointed out: “The social transformation described in Looking Backward has in turn transformed, or rather liberated, the human personality. In Bellamy’s vision of the year 2000, selfishness, greed, malice, insanity, hypocrisy, lying, apathy, the lust for power, the struggle for existence, and anxiety as to basic human needs are all things of the past.”

I knew the name Bellamy sounded familiar. The author was apparently the cousin of Francis Bellamy, famous for creation of the Pledge of Allegiance. You can find printed copies of Looking Backward 2000 – 1887 on Amazon, and free ebooks of Edward Ballamy’s book at Gutenberg.org."

HUNGER MAKES ME A MODERN GIRL by Carrie Brownstein

Refinished Th 2/6/25

This is a hardback that I got on Amazon in May of 2018 and I first finished Su 5/6/18. 

One of the better written Rock Profiles.

Her father came out as gay when she was out of the house and her mother was under treatment for anorexia Carrie's whole life. 

Interesting Observation: When she was 13 she saw her first rock show. One of her young friends exclaimed, 'I'd really like to fuck that guy!'. Carrie was thinking that she had no desire for 'that guy'. She wanted to BE 'that guy'. 

Unfortunately, the book only ends with the break up of SLEATER-KINNEY. Her move into acting might make an even more interesting book. 

From The Guardian:

"Her father did not come out as a gay man until very late in life; her mother developed a case of anorexia severe enough for hospitalization. She has had her own struggles with depression and one very frightening breakdown whose elements you’re best to read about in the book itself. (There is a story about her pets in this book that you should probably not read in a public place.)

But Brownstein’s way of telling those stories is from a rather intellectualized, even aestheticized, distance. Much of her mother’s disease, for example, is summed up in the single image of a beach photograph that shows “bags of white pus forming on her sternum”. It’s an image that proves difficult to forget once you have read it, one that cuts into you. It is also one which has a way of instantly transporting you to the depths of her mother’s suffering without seeming maudlin.

This “yearning” side of Brownstein, the sad part – “I continually made a ritual of emptiness,” she admits – does not correlate so well with her current public image. Certainly there is little of the laconic, laid back satire of Portlandia in this book. There is also little of the somewhat glamorous image she’s come to cut, the polish and the finesse.

But even more importantly, for cultural history purposes, there is also little of what most people who are only casual observers of the Riot Grrrl “scene” have come to expect of it. Moments of visceral anger are rarely dramatized as such, just reported matter-of-factly; feminism is mentioned but more often analyzed from a distance. Brownstein explains that in fact the politics could get toxic, refers even to a sort of public-shaming process that might sound familiar." 

BLADE RUNNER 2 by K.W. Jeter

 This is one of my paperbacks that I bought at the main branch in March of 2004.

Finished Su 2/2/25- The last novel that I read at seventy-five years old.

The writing is not to the 'weirdness level' of a PK Dick novel, but it's still somewhat compelling. 

The basic premise is, Who is a replicant and who is real?

 From Kirkus Reveiws:

"Ridley Scott's 1982 film noir, Blade Runner, was based on a Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Now, Jeter, Dick's prot‚g‚, attempts a sequel tying in both the book and the movie. Blade Runner Rick Deckard has fled the city with his dying beloved, the replicant Rachael. He's visited by Sarah Tyrell, now boss of the world's largest corporation--and, disconcertingly, the original from whom Rachael was replicated. Sarah commissions Deckard to search for a sixth replicant whose records were somehow mysteriously erased. Ominously, someone has murdered Deckard's old Blade Runner boss. And yet another Blade Runner, Dave Holden (shot in the early stages of the movie), has been snatched from the hospital, fitted with artificial heart and lungs, and persuaded to track down Deckard. Whodunthis? Why, Roy Batty, the original of the replicant (played by Rutger Hauer) that gave Deckard (Harrison Ford) such a tough time! So develops a glum, dull guess-who's-the-replicant sequence, ending in the destruction of the Tyrell corporation (Sarah's goal all along) and the escape of Deckard and Rachael (or so he thinks) aboard a starship. Long-winded and aimless, with neither the gloomy brilliance of Scott nor the unsettling psychological qualms of Dick."

FINNEGAN'S WEEK by Joseph Wambaugh

 This is one of my paperbacks that I first finished in December of 2015 and refinished on Mo 1/27/25.

 From Kirkus Reviews:

"After a so-so show in Fugitive Nights (1991), Wambaugh returns nearly in top form with a very funny suspenser about toxic waste. Finbar Finnegan, a San Diego police detective and sometime actor, has a midlife crisis at 45, his existence having been dominated by three sisters while growing up and by three ex-wives as an adult. His theme song is "Someone to Watch Over Me"—he needs a mommy/wife, has sworn off marriage, but finds himself tied ticklingly to two female detectives at once, both of whom see him as romantically interesting despite immense shortcomings: happy, cheerful, pistol-packing Petty Officer "Ba-a-d Dog" Bobbie Ann Doggett, 28, an investigator for the Navy who's looking for 2,000 boots hijacked from a warehouse; and District Attorney's Investigator Nell Salter, 43, once divorced, and looking for a stolen truck filled with supertoxic waste. The truck actually was "stolen" by its tow drivers—porky meth-head Shelby Pate and his Mexican sidekick, Abel Durazo, who lifted the boots while picking up drums of toxic waste at a naval station, took them to a fence in Tijuana, then pretended their truck was stolen while they ate lunch. The truck, however, gets sold to a Mexican pottery maker, who repaints uses it to deliver pots to San Diego. During all this, the waste drums still on the truck spill horrible Guthion over two kids, killing one of them. In their investigation, the three San Diego law folk wind up in weirdest Tijuana for some surreal surveillance duty—and have a punchy pair of drunk scenes that show Wambaugh at his cleverest in the sexy, gin-soaked Nick & Nora Department. Smart, crunchy dialogue—too topical, yes, but for now quite witty enough."

I was surprised that there were so many jokes and funny observations in the novel. "...like getting a circumcision with only a Bud Light for anesthesia".

The perfect 'Beach Read'.....

TRANSCRIPTION: A Novel by Kate Atkinson

 On Saturday, 1/18/25 I finished 'CASE HISTORIES' by Kate Atkinson and immediately borrowed 

'TRANSCRIPTION: A Novel' by Atkinson from the library via Kindle.

It's about a woman who worked for the British at MI5 during WWII. They set up a phony Fascist organization to entrap Nazis in the UK into telling their secrets.

After the war ends she notices one of the men in the program, but he claims he doesn't know her. This was a great novel and I really like her writing style. 

From Wikipedia:

"In 1950, Juliet Armstrong, a producer of children's programmes at the BBC, sees Godfrey Toby, a man she knew during WWII. When she approaches him he denies knowing her.

The incident causes Juliet to reflect back to 1940 when she was a young 18-year-old woman who had recently been orphaned. Hired to work at MI5, she is quickly scouted for an operation run by the elusive Perry Gibbons. Working out of two flats, the MI5 team reveal that they are spying on a group of low-level Nazi sympathisers who report to MI5 spy Godfrey Toby, believing he is a secret spy for the Gestapo. The walls are bugged with microphones and Juliet's job is to transcribe the audio recordings of their conversations.

Juliet develops a crush on Perry, who seems to encourage speculation that they are having an affair but does not return her affections. Instead he recruits her to ingratiate herself to a woman named Mrs. Scaife, hoping that she will lead them to the Red Book, a rumoured ledger containing the names of influential Nazi sympathisers. Juliet is given the false name Iris Carter-Jenkins. She is also approached by Oliver Alleyne, Perry's boss, who asks her to spy on Godfrey. Juliet does so, but despite noticing Godfrey acting suspiciously does not report back to Oliver.

While searching for the Red Book in Mrs. Scaife's house Juliet accidentally leaves behind her handbag, containing her real identity card, and asks Mrs. Scaife's maid, an orphan named Beatrice Dodd, to help cover for her.

A few days later, Perry proposes to Juliet, who doesn't realise he is gay. The following morning Juliet is sought out by the police who believed she was dead as they found the body of a young woman with her identification papers. Juliet realises that the body is Beatrice Dodd and is frightened as the location her body was found in was one mentioned by Godfrey Toby's Nazi sympathisers. A few days later, Juliet takes part in a sting operation during which Mrs. Scaife is arrested.

By 1950, Juliet is working at the BBC after the operation, and her relationship with Perry, quickly dissolved. However, she still has MI5 ties and allows her apartment to be used as a safe house for Soviet defectors. At work she receives an anonymous note telling her that she will never be able to pay for what she has done. Juliet grows paranoid, believing the note comes from one of Godrey's recruits. After Mrs. Scaife's arrest, Juliet and Godfrey were involved in killing Dolly, one of the low-level Nazi sympathisers, after she accidentally discovered their operation. However, none of the other living members of the circle ever discovered what Juliet had done. On her way home from the BBC Juliet is attacked, but is relieved to find that her attacker is a former spy named Nelly Varga who was persuaded to work for MI5 after they kidnapped her dog, a dog Juliet was put in charge of who later died.

Returning home Juliet finds a mysterious visitor waiting for her, a friend of Godfrey's, and realises she was being spied on for years by MI5 as she was a double agent for the Soviets, recruited at her MI5 interview. Godfrey's friend persuades her to betray her soviet handlers. Juliet realises she will never truly be free of either party. She tries to escape but is quickly caught by MI5 agents. However, Nelly Varga attacks her a second time, allowing her to escape, and Perry helps to smuggle her to Holland. Thirty years later, MI5 forcibly repatriates her to help flush out other Soviet spies, including Oliver Alleyne.

In 1981, shortly after being repatriated, Juliet is hit by a car and dies."

"Atkinson said in an author's note that she was partly inspired by the story of Eric Roberts, an MI5 officer who spent the Second World War masquerading as a Gestapo officer in London, running a group of British fascists who believed themselves to be German spies, in what was known as the Fifth Column operation."

CASE HISTORIES by Kate Atkinson

Finished Fr 1/17/25

This is an ancient trade paperback that I first finished We 5/30/07. I had bought the book at West Branch "after a ride to Litchfield on The Shadow".

There are basically two cases in this 'Literary Mystery' novel:

1) Four sisters; one disappeared when she was four years old. When their father dies, many years later, they find the young girl's teddy bear with their dad's possessions. 

2) A middle aged lawyer has his college age daughter help him at his law office. She is stabbed to death in random attack at their office.

This novel is the first in the 'Jackson Brodie' series.

From an Internet blog:

"Opening with three seemingly unrelated case histories separated by many years, these cold cases become the backbone of main character Jackson Brodie's investigations. Jackson served in the army before becoming a police officer and now a private investigator. His own life is complicated, a tragedy in his childhood, a failed marriage, on-going custody issues with his ex-wife over his beloved young daughter, and an investigation business that isn't making any money. In fact, one of his most consistent clients is the elderly, genteel but racist Binky Rain, who is convinced that her cats are being stolen, and a husband convinced that his flight attendant wife is cheating on him despite the fact that Jackson has assured him she's not. Then one by one, the case histories presented in the opening chapters land in Jackson's lap. All of a sudden he's investigating three year old Olivia Land's 1970 disappearance at the behest of two of her surviving sisters, the 1994 unsolved murder of Laura Wyre at the behest of Laura's desperately grieving father Theo, and the unknown whereabouts of her baby niece after her sister Michelle killed her husband by splitting his head open with an ax in 1979 at the behest of Michelle's sister Shirley. Although there is only new evidence in the case of little Olivia's disappearance, evidence that only surfaced recently after the elderly Mr. Land died, Jackson isn't confident that he'll manage to uncover the truth in any of the seemingly unrelated cases. He can't afford not to take the cases though, both monetarily and emotionally. And as he is investigating, there are several attempts on his life, adding yet another mystery to the the layers already present.

This is billed as a literary mystery and it is that. It is unlikely that readers will solve the cases themselves and as this is not strictly a whodunit but rather a case study of human beings, a deep look at the impact of violence on the people left behind, how the uncertainty shapes them, and the lives they carve out for themselves in the aftermath of tragedy, not being given all of the clues is beside the point. Atkinson delves deeply into not only Jackson, but also people most effected by the devastation of the crimes. Chapters are told focused on a close reading of Jackson, Amelia Land, Theo Wyre, and Caroline Weaver, including passages that are almost stream of consciousness, as each of the plot threads twist closer and closer to their resolution, either partial or whole. The novel has a complicated structure weaving together so many disparate plot lines and gathering them into a tight and deliberate single story.

Case Histories is a good introduction to Jackson, showing his past and his present, the way he works, those things that are most important in his life, and who he is. His ponderings on each of the cases reflect his worries and feelings for his daughter. This is a book about loss and family dynamics, the horrors human beings endure and those they inflict on others. It is a novel about the taken, the missing girls and women who disappear, who seldom, if ever, get justice. The case histories that the novels open with do get closure in the end, where they are retold with their heartbreaking, sometimes ugly, truths fully on display. The writing is gorgeous but the structure of the novel may mean it's not for everyone. It is the first in a series, so plot threads from Jackson's life are left unresolved. The victims in the case histories do come across as fairly stereotypical but luckily Atkinson more fully draws the remaining characters and even makes the subjects of those case histories (with the possible exception of Olivia) much more realistic as the novel goes on, bringing them off the flat page of their police files. I don't know if I intend to read more of the Jackson Brodie mysteries, but I enjoyed this one and was pleased to see that Atkinson's skill as a writer was evident here."

Within minutes after finishing the book I borrowed 'TRANSCRIPTION' by Kate Atkinson on Kindle from the library. 

AFTER HOURS by Edwin Torres

 This is one of my ancient paperbacks that contains two novels by Torres. The first (and featured on the cover) is 'CARLITO'S WAY' (was made into a movie by Brian DePalma) & 'AFTER HOURS'. I bought the book at The Old Book Barn in Decatur on Sa 10/7/95. 

I finished 'AFTER HOURS' {the sequel} on Sa 1/11/2025

From the back cover of the book:

"Drug dealer, theif, murderer, Carlito Brigante was once just another Spanish Harlem street punk with a poor boy's dream of flash and fast money- now he's a Mob-connected professional with easy charm, stubborn pride and a hair-trigger temper."

This was written a few years after 'CARLITO'S WAY' and it took a while to get into the story.

Basically, it concerns a crooked lawyer who is trying to use his father's influence (his dad's a judge) to get out of some dire legal difficulties. The district attorney's office is out for blood. And during all of this, Carlito is trying to get out of the rackets and live a quiet life with his lover. 

Edwin Torres is a former New York State Supreme Court judge and author of Puerto Rican descent, who wrote the 1975 novel Carlito's Way. His book was the basis for the 1993 movie of the same name, starring Al Pacino, and for the 1979 book After Hours, the sequel to Carlito's Way. 

INNOCENCE by Dean Koontz

 Finished Sa 1/4/2025

This is a hardback that Janny loaned to me. I loved the book and plan on asking her if I can keep the novel. 

A 'monster' lives beneath the city. He is horrifying to look at and the reason is that he 'was born without sin'. He's like 'oil to water' when he is among normal humans. 

The book is kind of a reworking of the 'Garden of Eden' myths. 

From the Internet:

"Now, I have to admit that Innocence is one the most unusual novels I’ve ever read, especially by Dean Koontz.  The story deals with Addison Goodheart, who, as a young boy, was turned out by his mother, and forced to leave their isolated home out in the wilderness.  Since his birth, no one could stand to look at Addison’s face, or to gaze into his knowing eyes.  To do so turned people mad with an uncontrollable rage that was viciously directed at the boy.  This rage caused them to not only want to kill Addison, but to literally destroy him.   Even his mother could only bear to look at his face for so many years before finally throwing in the towel and making the child leave to fend for himself in the woods surrounding their cabin and then in a large city where he would have to avoid people at all cost or risk being killed.

Fortunately for Addison, he happens upon a man who appears to be in the same boat as he with regards to his facial features.  The adult offers his hand in friendship and takes the boy under his wing to live in the tunnel system underneath the city.  Together they flourish with the man teaching the boy everything he knows about survival.  Tragedy, however, erupts after a few years and Addison once again is alone.  That is until he sneaks into a closed library one night to read and witnesses a girl (Gwyneth) about his own age, fleeing from a well-dressed man who seems intent on killing her.

Luckily, Gwyneth manages to escape the killer and through a strange turn of events, become friends with Addison.  It’s love at first sight for Addison because Gwyneth is a real beauty, but she can’t bear to be touched or to be around people.  Still, she accepts Addison into her life.  On many levels they are both alike in their sorrows and inner spirit.  In fact, they are kindred spirits.  Gwyneth also makes it a point not to look at Addison’s facial features, understanding his need not to be seen by anyone.

Before long, Addison gets caught up in Gwyneth’s unusual adventures that deal with her murdered father and the man who’s after her.  They will have to figure out a way to defeat this individual and his accomplices if they want to survive the next twenty-four hours.  What the two young kids don’t realize is that this is only the tip of the iceberg and making it through the day is nothing compared to what’s ahead.

Dean Koontz has proven himself to be a master of character development.  He has a unique skill at being able to create relatively innocent children or adults, and then of putting them into highly dangerous situations with villains who are filled with such inner darkness that there’s not a shred of light emanating from their souls, if they have one.

Such is the case with Innocence. 

You have a young boy whose heart is overflowing with compassion and love; yet, no one can gaze upon his face or look into his eyes.  Then, you have a young, beautiful girl who is literally a genius; yet, she can’t bear to be around people.  Together, these two individuals will have to face the ultimate evil within humanity just to live for another day.  With all of this going on, the reader learns to care about these kids and to hate the men who are after them.  It takes a great deal of talent to hook harden readers like this, and Dean Koontz does it in spades.

Though it’s not important to the enjoyment of Innocence, Dean Koontz works every bit as hard on each upcoming book as he did at the beginning of his career so many years ago.  He may write each page thirty, forty, fifty, or even seventy times in order to find the right words needed to tell the story."

THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION by Robert Ludlum

Finished Tu 12/31/24

This is a hardback library book that I bought used from Amazon and received Tu 12/17/24. It was from the Alexander Memorial Library in Cotulla, Texas. This is a tiny town between San Antonio and Laredo, TX. 650 pages and weighed 5 pounds.

I spent far too long on this novel, but I just had to know how it came out. 

The novel was released in 1984 and concerns Joel Converse. He's a man who realizes that a retired American general is masterminding a plot to turn the entire world into a fascist state. The general has set up false 'revolutions' in countries all around the world that will occur simaltaenously. This violence will allow the generals to step in and clamp down on any resistance and bring about 'peace'. 

Kirkus Reviews:

"A global Third Reich. . . One big Supreme Court, each chair owned by a fanatic . . . that group of men who've come together to promote a kind of violence that'll stun the world, toppling governments. . . ."" Don't Ludlum fans ever get tired of this same cartoon-conspiracy plot, shamelessly recycled virtually every other year? Apparently not. So here it is again, with fewer frills and convolutions than usual: the plot--though stretched out to 650 pages with repetitious talk and minor complications--is surprisingly straightforward this time around. Joel Converse, a young-ish lawyer on assignment in Geneva, is approached by old chum Avery, who (on behalf of an anonymous client) offers Joel $500,000 to undertake a patriotic mission against some world-wide conspiracy. Moments later, naturally, Avery is murdered--and Joel's on his way to Greece, where Avery's colleague outlines the mission: six militaristic super-fascists from six countries (US, UK, France, Germany, Israel, So. Africa) plan to take over the Western world by fomenting violence; to prevent this, Joel must somehow use legal means to undermine the plotters. Implausible? Indubitably. But Joel's off and running nonetheless--meeting the bad guys in Paris and Bonn, trying (idiotically) to infiltrate their group. Not that the bad guys are much more efficient: they capture Joel several times but keep allowing him to escape; they also frame him for a half-dozen murders. And so Joel, realizing that the ""Aquitaine"" conspirators have allies within all the Western governments, is now a fugitive from justice too, trying to get to Washington alive to convince someone in US power about the Aquitaine threat. The only person who seems to believe him: ex-wife Valerie, who rescues Joel in Amsterdam, takes his messages to America (more deaths ensue), and eventually joins him in the long countdown finale--when Joel (with CIA help at last) crushes the Aquitaine leadership, arranges an assault on the Aquitaine communications-center. . . but doesn't quite succeed in averting the assassination-festival which Aquitaine has already scheduled. Sounds familiar? Of course it does: to an even greater extent than previous Ludlums, this reads like second-rank John Buchan with a case of elephantiasis. Still, there's more old-fashioned action here--and much less murk--than in some recent Ludlum thrillers; and if some fans may miss the mysterious atmosphere, others will appreciate the absence of intricate, headache-inducing gobbledygook."

An excellent recap of the novel from 'Raritania':

https://raritania.blogspot.com/2022/03/review-aquitaine-progression-by-robert.html#:~:text=Alas%2C%20after%20the%20midpoint%20of,agent%2C%20capably%20dispatching%20enemy%20after

I spent far to long on the book because it promised far more than it delivered.