Appendix N

An often referred to thing in old school role playing game discussions is the fabled "Appendix N". This is the list of "inspirational and educational reading" that Gary Gygax included in the back of the Dungeon Masters Guide, the third and final book of the holy trinity of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. The list included most of the sources from which D&D was cobbled together, oftentimes lifting thoughts and ideas wholesale.

My original 1979 DMG, worn and yellowed

My exposure to the books and authors on this list was relatively sparse back in 1979, when the DMG was published (and purchased). I was somewhat of a fantasy geek back in junior high and high school (yes, before junior high became "middle school"), but apparently my geekdom was minor league at best, everything being relative. Of the things on the list, I could (and still can) claim to have read Tolkien, Robert E Howard (Conan the Barbarian), HP Lovecraft (Cthulhu, supernatural horror), Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser) and Michael Moorcock (Elric of Melnibone). Not on the "Appendix N" list, I had read the first several of the Piers Anthony Xanth series books (of which Amazon says there are now 35!!), as well as the first few of Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey's Thieves World series. Maybe a few other things. And that was about it.

Appendix N, with the patina of age...

Thirty years or more having passed since I read most of the books noted above (Tolkien being the exception, as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings get a re-read every half dozen years or so), so I have begun taking an extended literary stroll down memory lane and revisiting some of these books. I've gotten through the first book and a half of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser... Very entertaining.

Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser

I'm partway through the first Conan book... Very entertaining as well.

Conan

...and am partway through one of the new ones I want to read; Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson. The idea of Law and Chaos, the foundation of alignment in D&D (a 3 by 3 grid of lawful/neutral/chaotic and good/neutral/evil), is based on this book and its battle between the forces of Law and the forces of Chaos. I'm only a night's reading into this, so it's too early to tell what my final opinion will be, but it is not an easy read - too much phonetically exaggerated "dialect" that detracts from the story. But that being said, I am reading this for the historical perspective with regards to the foundations of D&D and not so much the quality of the read itself (although, of course, I do hope it turns out to be a good book). More to come on this one.

Three Hearts and Three Lions

Lastly, and I haven't picked these up yet, I want to read some of Jack Vance, specifically The Dying Earth. The system of magic user spell-casting in D&D is so directly lifted from Vance that Gary Gygax asked Vance if he could use the concept in his game, and the resulting way of regulating spell use in fantasy role playing games has become known as "Vancian magic". Basically, magic users memorize spells, and after they cast them, they forget them, and have to memorize them all over again before they can use them again. I think this will be another interesting one to read...

Funny the ebbs and flows of things, and how this particular rekindling of an interest has led me back around to a time that seems so distant it is almost like the shadow of a memory of something that happened to someone else entirely. Up the stairs and to the left to my room. Light blue walls. Hardwood floors and light tan carpet. Bookcases on the outside wall. Little student desk under the window overlooking the back yard. Bed tucked into the corner next to the desk. Homework is done and nothing particular to do. Grab a book. Flop on the bed. Take a journey to somewhere else...

Christmas Goodness

The holidays may well be mainly about spending time with family and friends, but no matter how old you get, you can still appreciate a few nice Christmas gifts, and the family treated me well again this year.

We are fortunate that gifts are about wants and not needs, and the following will certainly bear that out. All nice to have; none particularly necessary.

First is a pair of 25mm European village buildings from Miniature Building Authority. I have as many of these as I realistically need, but adding one or two interesting ones every now and then is a treat. "Postern gate II" is on the left, and "Alleygate #1" is on the right. Both are different enough from the townhouse and castle pieces that I already have to make them very nice additions to the collection.

Miniature Building Authority buildings (25mm)

Next are a trio of books on widely varied subjects: an 1862-63 scenario book for the Regimental Fire and Fury miniatures ruleset, and a pair of classic books on lost treasures of the southwest by J. Frank Dobie, Coronado's Children (1930) and Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver (1939?), covering some of the most famous legends and tales of the region.

Some Fun Reading

Lastly, there is a trio of books on musical subjects from brother Dave and his family: Springsteen's autobiography, a book on Yes, and a book on Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The ELP book is especially timely in that I saw the Carl Palmer Band last summer performing ELP music, in the same year that Keith Emerson died earlier in the year and Greg Lake died at the very end. As has been well documented elsewhere, it is hard to believe the number of musicians we lost in 2016. Included on that list are some very high profile ones that didn't mean all that much to me (David Bowie and Prince), and some other names that did (Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and of course Glenn Frey of the Eagles).

Music books

Thanks to all for the wonderful gifts and the hours of reading enjoyment they will certainly give me.

Book Review - Inherent Vice

(First edition cover with added "NYT...")

I have never read anything by Thomas Pynchon before, but seeing something about a movie for Inherent Vice coming out soon reminded me that I had that book sitting on my shelf. Since I was in the market for something to dig into next, I dug into it (Penguin Press, 2009, 369 pages).

Honestly, I had not been in a hurry to read anything by Pynchon since attempting Gravity's Rainbow back in high school. This is a long, dense, difficult piece of post-modernist fiction. While it has been hailed by some as the greatest post WW2 American novel, suffice it to say that it is not an easy read. To say the least.

Inherent Vice was different. To briefly summarize, it is a story of a drug-addled private investigator looking into a number of ultimately related events in Los Angeles at the tail end of the 1960's. It is not a difficult read (as are most of Pynchon's books), and the only distracting things are the persistent "groovy" dialect of the '60s. While correct from a period standpoint, it almost reads cartoonish.

All in all, this wasn't a bad way to spend 369 pages, but if you wanted to read a California noir period piece, you might as well read Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, et al. A worthy read but nothing special.

3.5 stars out of 5. Solid but not earth shattering.

Books this year: 6
Total pages: 2,061
New authors: 3

Next, I am partway into Peter Matthiessen's In Paradise (his final novel before his death).

Book Review - Closing Arguments

Being out of town all week in Dallas at my company's 2015 National Sales Meeting (at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine) kept me very busy, but a little bit of wind-down reading time before bed each night got me through Frederick Busch's Closing Arguments (1991, Ticknor and Fields, 288 pages).

This is the story of Mark Brennan, a Vietnam vet lawyer practicing in upstate New York. Brennan is dealing with what we would now call post traumatic stress disorder, a troubled marriage, and children struggling to find their way in the world. This all comes to a head when he is asked to defend a young woman accused of murder, and who claims that the death was an accident as a result of consensual rough sex that went too far.

The reader is brought along for the somewhat predictable but nonetheless compelling descent into darkness as Brennan tries to outrun the ghosts of his past while making a mess of the present. And as Brennan notes, "the innocent are not protected."

This was my fourth Busch book, and was a good read, although not as good as his novel Girls (1997) or his short story collection Rescue Missions (his last published work before his death in 2006). The Night Inspector (1999, a PEN/Faulkner finalist) was also very good.

3.5 stars out of 5. Very solid. Not spectacular, but it did keep me turning the pages.

Books this year: 5
Total pages: 1,692
New authors: 2

Book Review - A Spot of Bother

A Spot of Bother

After reading a series of new (2014) books recently, I went back to the shelves and dug out something that I had been meaning to get to for a while: Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother (2006, Doubleday, 354 pages). Haddon first hit the radar screen with the critically acclaimed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which I would also like to read, but don't have (making the whole reading thing much more difficult). Which brings us back to A Spot of Bother...

The book is described as a "disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely." It is the story of George Hall, a very proper retired English businessman, and his family. His daughter is getting married (and has relationship problems). His son is gay (and has relationship problems). He is aware that his wife is having an affair with an old colleague (and so he has relationship problems). In the midst of all this, George finds a spot on his hip and decides, all medical evidence to the contrary, that he is dying of cancer. And then things begin to fall apart, and in time, come back together again.

It felt a little contrived at times that everyone in the family was going through a parallel experience of "relationship falls apart and then gets pieced back together again" all at the same time, but I enjoyed the characters and the situations, and there were many times that I found myself laughing out loud. That doesn't happen too often. And the 354 pages went by very quickly.

"Jamie had spent a great deal of time and energy arranging his life precisely as he wanted. Work. Home. Family. Friends. Tony. Exercise. Relaxation. Some compartments you could mix. Katie and Tony. Friends and exercise. But the compartments were there for a reason. It was like a zoo. You could mix chimpanzees and parrots. But take the cages away altogether and you had a bloodbath on your hands." (p. 33)

A very solid 4 stars out of 5.

Books this year: 4
Total pages: 1,404
New authors: 2

Next up is Frederick Busch's Closing Arguments.

Book Review - Everything I Never Told You

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet."

And thus begins a terrific book. A couple weeks after finishing Anthony Doerr's fabulous All the Light We Cannot See, I now already have another 5-star book in 2015 - Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (2014, Penguin Press, 292 pages). This is a debut novel, and one of the best I have read recently.

This is a powerful story of the oriental and mixed-marriage experience in the 1960s and 1970s, the failures and disappointments of parents, the expectations parents impose on their children, the crushing weight this brings to bear, and the damaging secrets kept within families.

Given the captivating opening line, this wasn't about what had happened, but about why. It is both tragic yet perhaps hopeful, and powerful because it rang true to me. It was predictable in places, surprising in others, and kept me turning pages until I was done in three evenings.

"Stunned, Lydia fell silent. All their lives Nath had understood, better than anyone, the lexicon of their family, the things they could never truly explain to outsiders; that a book or a dress meant more than something to read or something to wear; that attention came with expectations that - like snow - drifted and settled and crushed you with their weight. All the words were right, but in this new Nath's voice, they sounded trivial and brittle and hollow. The way anyone else might have heard them. Already her brother had become a stranger." (pg. 263)

"...she had been afraid so long, she had forgotten what it was like not to be - afraid that, one day, her mother would disappear again, that her father would crumble, that their whole family would collapse once more. Ever since that summer without her mother, their family had felt precarious, as if they were teetering on a cliff. Before that she hadn't realized how fragile happiness was, how that if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it. Anything her mother wanted, she had promised. As long as she would stay. She had been so afraid." (pp. 272-273)

5 stars out of 5. I loved it.

Books this year: 3
Total pages: 1,050
New authors: 1

Book Review - The Laughing Monsters

The second book this year is The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson (2014, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 228 pages). The dust jacket blurb calls this a "high suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post 9/11 world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game." Meh.

I have read some of Johnson's previous works and enjoyed them, but I found this to be good but not great. The story is that a Scandinavian intelligence agent (or not?) returns to west Africa to meet up with a former associate to do...I'm not sure what. There was talk of Uranium, money making schemes, marriages, visits to the Uganda-Congo interior borderlands, CIA involvement, and more...stuff.

As you can tell, this was not my favorite book, mostly, I suppose, because I am not sure what the point was. Which in fact, may have been the point - that the fragmentation of society in modern west Africa, and the resulting "every man for himself" attitude, has turned the region into an unpredictable mess. If that was the point, it made an OK but unspectacular read.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Books read this year: 2
Pages: 758
New authors: None

Best book of the year so far - still All the Light We Cannot See.

Looking ahead, I am deep into another book that is shaping up to be a fantastic read...

Book Review - All the Light We Cannot See

As far as books go, I have begun 2015 with what will probably end up being a strong contender for my favorite book of the year, no matter how many more I read. Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See (Scribner, 2014) is a captivating 530 pages.

Set primarily during World War 2 and the years leading up to it, the book traces the lives of a handful of different people, and is told from each of their varying perspectives. It is a compelling page turner full of well developed characters, and is constructed in a very interesting way. The book is comprised of a multitude of short chapters, generally not more than 2-3 pages each. The chapters bounce from person to person, and jump backwards and forwards on the timeline. Working your way through the story gives glimpses of the climax, the beginnings, and the development of the plot, all intermingled. It is like reading a 500 page puzzle where the pieces are placed for you, one by one, in a seemingly random but actually very calculated manner. While you are given glimpses early on of where things are headed, and it is relatively easy to make certain deductions, it is the unravelling (the journey to get there) that helps to make the book so fascinating.

The characters are compelling and include French civilians (prewar and occupied France), as well as Germans who begin as children in prewar Nazi Germany and end up as soldiers. Eventually all the pieces come together in occupied St Malo, France in 1944. It is about people being molded by the time and place in which they live. About some people taking advantage of war, and others being taken advantage of by it. It's about fear, duty, obligation, perseverance, love, kindness and cruelty.

Brilliant book. Very highly recommended. 5 stars out of 5. A National Book Award finalist for a very good reason.

The Year in Review 2014 - Literature

After reading almost no fiction at all in 2013, I got back on that particular horse and managed to get in a decent amount of fiction reading this year.

At the halfway point of the year, posted in summary here on June 30, I had read 11 books by ten different authors. Over the second half of the year I was mainly reading history and wargaming stuff, but did mange to get in 4 more fiction books, all by authors I had read before.

Total books: 15 (by 11 different authors, including 6 new ones for me).
Total pages: 4,386.

Best books of the year for me in 2014 (in order):

• The Painter by Peter Heller. A marvelous work by someone I hadn't read before. My only five star book this year.
• The Son by Philipp Meyer. Another sensational (and big) book by the author of American Rust, one of my favorite books of 2009.
• A terrific pair by Wiley Cash (another new author for me); This Dark Road to Mercy and the almost equally good A Land More Kind than Home.

There were other good books, but these were cream of the crop this year for me.

Full year summary (new authors for me in italics):

• 5 - The Painter (Peter Heller)
• 4.5 - The Son (Philipp Meyer)
• 4.5 - This Dark Road to Mercy (Wiley Cash)
• 4 - A Land More Kind Than Home (Wiley Cash)
• 4 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz)
• 4 - The Realm of Last Chances (Steve Yarbrough)
• 4 - Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather [Stories] (Gao Xingjian)
• 4 - St Burl's Obituary (Daniel Akst)
• 3.5 - Netherland (Joseph O'Neill)
• 3.5 - The Burgess Boys (Elizabeth Strout)
• 3.5 - There Must Be Some Mistake (Frederick Barthelme)
• 3.5 - The Brothers (Frederick Barthelme)
• 3.5 - Drown [Stories] (Junot Diaz)
• 2.5 - Two Against One (Frederick Barthelme)
• 4.5 - The Vintage Caper (Peter Mayle) 

I was fortunate enough to get a pair of fiction books for Christmas that I have been looking forward to reading, and I am partway into one of those but will likely not finish it before the end of the year. (All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr - absolutely terrific so far).

Christmas Gifty Goodness

It was primarily a book year this year for me in terms of gifts. Trolling Amazon identified a likely list of candidates, and these are the ones that ended up making the cut.

Christmas library additions

The history books are a pair by Desmond Seward (The Demon's Brood; A History of the Plantagenet Dynasty and The Warrior King and the Invasion of France - an Agincourt campaign book). The first is new in 2014, the second is a new 2014 edition of a 1988 book. There is also The Hundred Years War; A People's History by David Green and The Greatest Knight (a life of William Marshal) by Thomas Asbridge (both new in 2014). I have read some of Seward before, and have read Asbridge's Crusades books as well as Green's Poitiers book, so I am pretty sure I will like all of these.

As for the fiction, I like Johnson, and the Anthony Doerr book is one of the best regarded books of the year. I think I read one of Doerr's short story collections a few years back and liked it. As I write this, I am 45 pages into All the Light We Cannot See.

I also got a few packs of miniatures to fill in gaps in some periods, and hopefully will make some painting progress on some of those before too long (house guests leave for home tonight and I can put my painting area back together again). These new packs include muslim infantry and archers, Bedouin light cavalry and Arab armored cavalry (all of which can be used for Crusades or southern Italy) as well as a couple packs of early crossbowmen and German foot knights (mainly to be used as commanders on bases of common infantry).

Watching the kids enjoy the holidays is by far the best part of the season, but getting some presents is always nice too.

Book Review - The Brothers

Back in October, I read two books by Frederick Barthelme, liking one and disliking the other. I thought There Must be Some Mistake was a solid effort typical of Barthelme's last few novels, and thought the much earlier Two Against One was the worst of his I had read (by quite a bit). Perhaps to wash the taste of T.A.O. out of my mouth, I went back and read another of his older novels; The Brothers (Viking, 1993, 262 pages).

This was back in late October or early November but I never got around to blogging about it. By now, details are fuzzy, but The Brothers was another good read of the type that I expect from Barthelme - believable everyday people getting on with their lives as best they can. This particular book is about a pair of brothers, struggling with their careers and their relationship with each other, and not doing an especially good job of either.

There is a follow up book to this (which is sitting on my night stand), but I am Barthelmed-out for the moment, and will move on to something else before going back to that at some point.

"The birds were amazing, the way they flew and then folded up like daggers and slammed into the water. Everything was turning a wonderful gunmetal gray. There were a few yellow lights shimmering on the water, reflected from car lights up on the big highway.
Fog was coming in from the Gulf, and it was thick. Out toward the mouth of the bay, toward the Gulf, it looked as though the water went maybe half a mile and then stopped dead. Everything past that was gray." [p79]

A solid 3.5 stars out of 5.

Book Review - Two Against One

Having read a fourth Frederick Barthelme novel recently, and with several more of his on the shelf, I kept the momentum going by reading Two Against One (Collier Books, 1988, 264 pages).

I could repeat what I said about the last one with regards to this, as this was like it, only more so. To quote one of the review blurbs on the back cover: "On Edward's fortieth birthday, his estranged wife, Elise, appears unannounced at the door, triggering a series of events that will involve the couple in a bizarre triangle and lay open the workings of a fifteen year marriage."

I guess that's one way of putting it. These people were unsympathetic and often downright bizarre, toiling through a plot that was...I don't even know what it was. I liked this less than the other books of Barthelme's that I have read (obviously). The saving grace was some salvageable commentary on expectations, relationships, love and sexuality. Unfortunately, as I couldn't help but keep thinking as I was working my way through this, the nice bits were buried in way too much not-so-good book. My opinion, anyway.

Only 2.5 stars out of 5. Don't bother with this one, as there are better Barthelme books out there. Like maybe all of them.

This gets me to 14 books and 2 partial story collections on the year, totaling a shade under 4,300 pages. Best book of the year so far is still The Painter.

Book Review - There Must be Some Mistake

It's been a while since my last reading binge (fiction reading, that is). However, I was in a bookstore a little while back, and saw a new novel (There Must Be Some Mistake, Little Brown and Co, 2014, 294 pages) by Frederick Barthelme, a writer who I have read before. I picked it up, plowed through it, and finished it a few days ago.

This is the story of Wallace Webster, a semi-retiree living in a condo development in the Gulf Coast area of east Texas. The residents of the condo development begin dying at an alarming rate, to accidents and other circumstances. We follow Webster through this maze of events as he deals with his ex-wife, her boyfriend (who happens to be the ex-husband of a younger female work friend whom he spends a lot of time with and has an...odd...relationship), his daughter and others.

I found the novel similar to the three previous Barthelme books I have read (Waveland, Elroy Nights and Second Marriage); which revolve around a not-overly-sympathetic aging male character thrown into all sorts of odd circumstances. Barthelme's characters can be head-scratching in their thought process and frustrating in the choices they make, but are for the most part interesting to read.

This is a solid if unspectacular read. Maybe 3.5 stars out of 5. The ending was bizarre, even given what had come before...

Next up...I've begun another older Barthelme book I had on hand (Two Against One, 1988).

Book Review - A Land More Kind Than Home

Wednesday night, before heading back up to the in laws' house for the holiday weekend, I finished Wiley Cash's first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home (William Morrow, 2012, 306 pages). I read this on the strength of having read his second book earlier this year and having really liked it (This Dark Road to Mercy).

This is described as a literary thriller, and is the story of two brothers living in the North Carolina mountains. One brother is handicapped, and ends up dead following mysterious events at a secretive fundamentalist church, some of which are seen by Jess, the other brother. Events take their course as the sheriff tries to determine what happened, the pastor tries to hide it, and the family of the dead boy tries to understand and come to grips with the loss of their son.

Saying more than that little blurb would give away more than I would want to, and this is a book well worth reading. If anything, I found it to be perhaps slightly less polished than his second book, but it was still very good. And while the events unfold in a somewhat predictable manner, there was an inevitability to the way things built to their conclusion that made a lot of sense.

A solid 4 stars out of 5. I will definitely be on the lookout for whatever else Cash comes out with in the future.

Reading Review - First Half 2014

It's been a literature reading year thus far, unlike last year which was mainly history. Funny how that works. Once I get on a roll and realize how many more good books there are to read, I gain a momentum that can last months at a time, and sometimes a year or more. The first half of this year has been no exception to that pattern.

So here are the books read thus far this year (with new authors for me in italics), roughly in order of preference. Some ratings may have been slightly adjusted upon further review and to slot them more accurately with regards to other books read later in the year. By my arbitrary 5 star ratings:

• 5 - The Painter (Peter Heller)
• 4.5 - The Son (Philipp Meyer)
• 4.5 - This Dark Road to Mercy (Wiley Cash)
• 4 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz)
• 4 - The Realm of Last Chances (Steve Yarbrough)
• 4 - Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather [Stories] (Gao Xingjian)
• 4 - St Burl's Obituary (Daniel Akst)
• 3.5 - Netherland (Joseph O'Neill)
• 3.5 - The Burgess Boys (Elizabeth Strout)
• 3.5 - Drown [Stories] (Junot Diaz)
• 4.5 - The Vintage Caper (Peter Mayle, 2009, 223 pages) - I didn't review this book separately, as I wouldn't call it a work of literature by any means, and so even at 4.5 stars it is here at the bottom of the list. It's a very good book, but reads like a piece of candy. It is set in California and in Paris and Marseille, and is part halfhearted mystery, but mainly just a good book about food, wine, travel and likable enough characters. A very nice two-day read, but this is cotton candy among rib eye steaks. Loved it, but it is what it is. Everything else on this list is serious literature...this is a good book.

Total books - 11
Total pages - 3,260
Different authors - 10
New authors - 6

There really wasn't a bad book in this bunch, and not a single one that I wouldn't wholeheartedly recommend others to read.

I also read parts of the following story collections:

• Fever (John Edgar Wideman) - Wasn't crazy about Wideman's style and probably won't finish this.
• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (ZZ Packer) - Did like Packer's style and will finish this, in pieces, eventually.

As we move into the back half of the year, I am partway through Wiley Cash's first book (A Land More Kind Than Home, 2013) and have also started Tom Rachman's second novel (The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, 2014 - I was stuck out of town without a book and needed to buy something to read...). Both of these novels are keeping the quality level very high...

Next up in the (potential) on-deck circle are The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt), All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr) and In Paradise (Peter Matthiessen).

Book Review - The Painter

Ten books into the year, the best book so far is now The Painter by Peter Heller (2014, Aldred A Knopf, 364 pages). I finished this back in mid-May but never got around to writing my usual brief post about it.

This is another book by an author I was not familiar with but picked up solely on the strength of an Amazon "best books of the month" recommendation. I realize that I am willingly falling into the trap of buying what Amazon tells me to buy, but with very few exceptions I have been very pleased with their choices and see no reason to stop.

The book is the story of Jim Stegner, a commercially successful expressionist painter with a troubled personal life and a violent streak. Stegner leaves the Santa Fe/Taos New Mexico art community for the solitude of the Colorado mountains. Things happen. More things happen, and Stegner finds himself being pulled back into the kind of behavior that he was trying to leave behind.

This is a story of love, violence, vengeance, family, and a whole lot of other stuff, woven in and around art, the outdoors and fishing. This was a beautifully written page turner of a novel, not in the sense that you weren't sure what was going to happen next, but more in the sense that you thought you knew what was probably going to happen next but needed to see it unfold. In that regard it was reminiscent of James Lee Burke, James Crumley, John D. MacDonald and those few other authors who could write that top-tier of literary suspense/thrillers.

"I had fished the Rio de los Pinos before. It's the little creek that runs through the gorge. How those little streams make such a big impression. I had driven the long washboarded dirt road down off the plateau and parked at a little bridge. I had walked up into the walled canyon. I had fished with a peregrine gliding the wall just over my head, and later with the sun slanting down and backlighting the biggest hatch of mayflies I had ever seen, the light coming through a candescent mist of wings, and I caught more fish in an hour than I ever had before. ... Some creeks you simply loved, and seeing the railroad sign with the craggy gorge reminded me that we can proceed in our lives just as easily from love to love as from loss to loss. A good thing to remember in the middle of the night when you're not sure how you will get through the next three breaths." [p. 165]

"...I walked over to the edge of the pinions and a jackrabbit shot from under a saltbush and zagged off into the false twilight. Most of us are never seen, not clearly, and when we are we likely jump and run. Because being seen can be followed by the crack of a shot or the twang of an arrow. I took a leak in the flinty dirt. I didn't know what any of us wanted." [p. 277]

5 stars out of 5. Loved it. Best book of the year so far.

Book Review - Netherland

Next up on the reading list was one of the books I picked up earlier this year at the Concord Mall's annual book fair; Netherland by Joseph O'Neill (2008, Pantheon Books, 256 pages). This was a PEN/Faulkner winner in 2009.

The New York Times called this "stunning...with echoes of The Great Gatsby" (citing the cover blurb). I'm not sure I see that. This was a very good book, don't get me wrong. But I think Gatsby is one of the greatest books of the 20th century for good reason. This was not on a par with that. Little is. Thematically, I don't really follow the comparisons. The Wikipedia entry on Gatsby says that it "explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval" and is "a cautionary tale on the American Dream." Netherland is not this.

But I digress.

As I try to describe, briefly, what Netherland is, I find that it is not easy to do so. It is the story of a man's personal journey in the wake of a failing (and then resurrected) marriage. Part of the plot revolves around the man's wife fleeing New York city in the aftermath of 9/11, but it is not a 9/11 book. The sport of cricket is peppered throughout the book, but it is not about cricket. The protagonist is a Dutch man who has lived in London and is temporarily in New York, and some of the more prominent supporting cast are immigrants. But it is not really about the immigrant experience. It's not about the American Dream.

It's a great book. About a guy. But I think the literary critics over-think things. "A post-colonial rewriting of The Great Gatsby." "...the most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell." Hmm. I digress again.

4 stars out of 5. A very good book, and one that I enjoyed immensely. Read it. But it ain't Gatsby. :-)

"...she reaches for my hand and squeezes it. Strange, how such a moment grows in value over a marriage's course. We gratefully pocket each of them, these sidewalk pennies, and run with them to the bank as if creditors were banging on the door. Which they are, one comes to realize." (p. 183)

Book Review - St Burl's Obituary

The last of the trio of mini book reviews to catch up on is St Burl's Obituary by Daniel Akst (MacMurray & Beck, 1996, 370 pages). I picked this up cheaply on eBay a while back solely on the strength of it being a 1997 PEN/Faulkner award finalist.

I have had a lot of luck reading my way through the PEN/Faulkner lists (well, not luck I guess since they are award winners and nominees...). This was no exception. It is described as "a rollicking burlesque on death, resurrection, and dinner." I suppose that works. It is the story of an obese man, Burleigh Bennett, whose life revolves around food, and who writes obituaries for a New York City paper. He is a social misfit whose passion is all things food (and wine). One night, there is a gangland slaying of three men in the restaurant of which Burl is a part owner, and Burl sees (and is seen by) the suspected shooter. Burl is expected to eventually testify as the police try to make a case against the crime boss responsible for the hit. Instead, Burl takes a bunch of cash, disappears from his own life, drops off the grid entirely, and makes his way out West.

The resulting tale of travel on the run, binge eating, homelessness, gastric bypass surgery, faked death, assumed identity and lots of other things culminating in a return to New York City make for a fascinating read. I found there to be some far-fetched and head scratching parts that I didn't quite buy into, but it was a compelling book, all the more so because of its unusual nature. I don't think I have read another book quite like this; it was different and refreshing. While I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a great book necessarily, it was a very good book and well worth the time. I have heard it said that there are only five plots in all of literature. If that's true then this was certainly an unusual variant of one of those five.

Another solid 3.5 stars out of 5. Quirky, interesting, and I liked the food parts, being a foodie myself. Leaning close to 4 stars but maybe not quite there. Or maybe. OK, let's call it 4 stars.

As an aside, I liked this book well enough to search out what else Daniel Akst has written since this, published 18 years ago. The answer is...not much of anything from a fiction perspective, although his non-fiction resume is pretty impressive. This is a shame. I'd read another book by him anytime.

Book Review - The Burgess Boys

The second book from April to catch up on was Elizabeth Strout's The Burgess Boys (Random House, 2013, 320 pages). I was eager to read this one, as I have enjoyed two of Strout's previous books very much (Amy and Isabelle and Olive Kitteridge), and this had a lot of hype following her Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge.

This is the story of a dysfunctional set of siblings, two brothers and a sister, who must band together as best they can when the sister's troubled son gets into some serious trouble. Susan is the sibling who stayed behind in Maine while the two brothers (Jim and Bob) "escaped" as they view it. One is a very successful corporate attorney and one is a Legal Aid attorney, both in New York City. When Susan's son pulls a so-called-prank that turns into a hate crime investigation, the siblings are forced to come to terms with each other and their past...as best they can...as they struggle to help their sister and nephew.

While I did like the book, and it certainly kept my attention, it did leave me wanting more. This was rated as one of the best books of the year in a number of different places, and I am not sure I am in complete agreement with that. It was a good book, well written, but didn't resonate with me the way others have. Perhaps it was that the characters were not overly sympathetic, or that too many things were left unresolved. Or perhaps I was just in the mood for something more uplifting, which this was not.

A solid 3.5 stars out of 5, but not my favorite of Strout's books. It's probably my third favorite out of the three I have read, although still good, and a worthwhile read.

"She had never seen what she saw now; that her mother's fits of fury had made fury acceptable, that how Susan had been spoken to became the way she spoke to others. Her mother had never said, Susan, I'm sorry, I should not have spoken to you that way. And so years later, speaking that way herself, Susan had never apologized either.

And it was too late. No one wants to believe that something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is." (p. 254)

Book Review - The Son

I have a few thumbnail book reviews to catch up on. Back in early April, I finished Philipp Meyer's second novel, The Son (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2013, 561 pages). I was a huge fan of his first (American Rust, noted here) when I read it back in 2009 (shortly before I began blogging), and thought it was one of the best books I read that year. This was every bit as good if not better, and had an epic scope that his first didn't.

This hefty novel is the story of the McCullough family, and is a tale woven across many generations, beginning in 1849 and ending not many years ago. It begins with the massacre of Eli McCullough's family when he was 13 years old, when Texas was a wild frontier fought over by Texans, Mexicans and various Native American tribes. Eli is carried off by the Comanches and is raised as one of their own. Eventually he breaks from the Comanches, marries, and becomes a cattle rancher. Over the following 150 years, we follow several more generations of McCulloughs as they climb from ranchers to cattle barons to oilmen, becoming some of the richest people in Texas.

The book does a good job of depicting both the romance and the brutality of life on the frontier, and how the history of the family shapes their futures. The narrative takes a little getting used to since the story is told primarily from the perspective of a handful a McCulloughs themselves (although there are a bunch of others thrown in for good measure), and is scattered across the years. It continually jumps back and forth in time, changing year with every switch in narrator. At any given point in the book, the narrator could be any of a handful of people, and the year could be anywhere in that 150 year range. The complete lack of linear progression in telling the story makes it a little confusing at first, but it soon becomes routine. One thing that did help following along was to have marked the page at the front that showed the McCullough family tree...

It is a meticulously constructed novel, and a rewarding read as more and more of the pieces fall into place as the story progresses. A really terrific book. 4.5 stars out of 5.