Gun, with Occasional Music

Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem, is a hard-boiled sci-fi detective story that keeps you reading with a combination of the suspense of the mystery and the mysterious world it occurs in. The story doesn't quite succeed in rising to the heights it aspires to, but it is a lot of fun. I think sci-fi fans would be more ready than mystery fans to cut it the necessary slack, but maybe they're the ones who will share my disappointment with the end. ***(*)
I just bopped over and checked out a review on a sci-fi site that supports my original idea: http://www.sff.net/people/Richard.Horton/gunwith.htm

Die Trying by Lee Child

I've reviewed one of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books before; I think it was Echo Burning. Everything I said about that one is true of this one. Die Trying is actually the second book in the series. I think if you came to it as the first or second Reacher book you ever read, you'd think it was a terrific example of the genre, and question very little. It took me a while to get into it (because I was questioning things), but the last half is wall-to-wall action and suspense. Jack Reacher is one part McGyver, one part Parker, one part Bob Lee Swagger, and one part Conan the Barbarian. It is a terrific example of the genre, it just incorporates all the weaknesses of the genre. ****

Lincoln's Greatest Speech by Ronald C. White Jr.

I was assigned this book for an AP Language teaching workshop I'm due to attend in two weeks. It's very brief, as the speech itself (the second inaugural) was brief. I have previously read Gary Will's Lincoln at Gettysburg with great interest (reread parts of it later). I'm fascinated by the sort of rhetorical analysis these books contain, by Lincoln himself, by the Civil War, and by those times in general. I give this book ****, but if you don't want to read a book in which each paragraph of a speech gets a chapter of analysis dedicated to it, you won't want to read this. I enjoyed whole pages on what "attributes" and "malice" and "charity" meant in the context of the speech.
Here, however. is some interesting historical trivia: the only photo of Lincoln making a speech is of this one, The only piece of furniture on the platform Lincoln spoke from was a white Iron table made by Major Benjamin Brown French from fragments of the recently-replaced iron dome of the Capitol, John Wilkes Booth is visible in the picture behind Lincoln, Lincoln recognized Frederick Douglass in the crowd and later insisted on hearing his opinion of the speech, Douglass called it, "a sacred effort."
Here's the picture:

Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now

Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles is a look at the Beatles, the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership, and McCartney's role in the avant-garde art scene in London in the late '60's. Miles was a part of that scene, of McCartney's social circle, and eventually, of Apple. In the '90's he interviewed McCartney for hours over a span of years for this book. You have to already know a lot about the Beatles, and want to know more, to appreciate it. The greatest benefit of it is in not so much setting the record straight, but giving light from another angle. The highlights for me were the parts about writing the songs; I had to grab my copy of the complete lyrics and regularly look at it as I read. It would be nice to have a copy of the Lennon interview in which he gave his take on who did what on each song, and be able to put them side by side. According to this book there is only a little disagreement between the two of them on two songs.
I could have done without the art parts, but they were probably the parts Miles enoyed the most; as I was slogging through the middle bit I was thinking that the 100 pages or so that were about the art scene and the Indica book store were probably a shortened version of the book he really wanted to write.
***if you are interested in the Beatles or McCartney.