Mixwit mixtape

Gray Ghost by William G. Tapply

Gray Ghost by William G. Tapply is the second book in a new series for Tapply. The hero is Stoney (Stonewall Jackson) Calhoun. Struck by lightning, Stoney cannot remember anything before that event. He lives in the woods of Maine and works as a fishing guide and fishing supply shop co-owner. Stoney's constantly rediscovering old skills: he knows how to kill people with his hands, for example, and in this book he learns that he once played basketball. Gray Ghost was as easy to read as any of Tapply's Brady Coyne books, but with most of the action in Portland and on Casco Bay I got hung up on some geographical issues. South Portland is treated as if it is part of Portland, Cape Elizabeth is moved to where South Portland is, a deep-water cove is described as being in a place only a very small boat can get to (and there's no cove there), a dive bar is placed in an alley off Wharf St (which in reality is an alley). Why?
All the distraction of those inaccuracies kept me mulling about the story and led me to realize that the characterizations are unrealistic and generate plot holes. So know what you're getting, but it's still a ***
Here's a link to my last Tapply review.
I mention Tapply's recently deceased friend and sometime cowriter Philip Craig in that one. I couldn't help thinking that this new character, named Jackson, living in the woods, surviving an injury that ended some kind of law enforcement career, and loving fishing is in some ways a tribute to Craig's J.W. Jackson.

Mad Dogs by James Grady

Mad Dogs by James Grady **** approaching the magical 5. If you follow the link in the header you'll see a blurb about this book being a seamless blend of styles.
Grady, of course, wrote Six Days of the Condor, paranoid spy thriller that was the basis for the tightened up movie Three Days of the Condor. Very noir, very Seventies. Mad Dogs updates the concept to the 2000's, including a brief homage to the older one. Cool! Hot! Crazy!
Dan Brown wishes he could write this well, and so do a lot of other people.
You'll only put it down to take a few deep breaths.

Howard Zinn's A People's History of American Empire

Howard Zinn's A People's History of American Empire is a comic book version of the book that shows how America's foreign policy has had less to do with democracy than capitalism. It's a graphic, but no comic book. This is heavy stuff, but condensed and comprehensible. ****

When We Get to Surf City by Bob Greene

I could hardly wait to start When We Get to Surf City by Bob Greene, and once I did I didn't want to do anything but read it until I finished. I've read two other Bob Greene books: Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael Jordan, and Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War. Both would get a four-star rating here. He's got a journalist's ear and a columnist's eye. And he must be a pretty good guy to hang with, since Michael Jordan and the whole Jan and Dean band befriended him.
This story starts with a member of that band contacting him after picking up a Greene memoir in an airport. He ends up joining the band on tour whenever possible for years. On the oldies circuit and encountering Ben E. King, Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and others Greene portrays the tragic Jan Berry as only the most extreme example of the unasked question, "What do you do when your life is over, but you're still alive." The answer is modern-day heroism: just keep living.
Maybe you have to be in your fifties to enjoy a book about playing surf music, but Greene sees young kids at the concerts who know every word to songs like "Help Me Rhonda." I never went more than ten pages without laughing or crying (often both at once). ****

The Annotated Northwest Passage by Scott Chantler

Yesterday I zipped through The Annotated Northwest Passage by Scott Chantler. In the annotatations he mentions that it is his first professional writing job. That's incredible! It is superbly plotted. If you are interested in the nuts and bolts of writing and visual composition the annotations make it a lot more fun. ****
I don't even want to bother to summarize plot. Click on the title to go to Chantler's home page. Or click here to go to a summary in a review on a blog.

Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe

I think maybe Gene Wolfe was inspired to write Pirate Freedom by reading Empire of Blue Water (see my review of last year). I further think, that since he's a Sci-Fi writer he framed the whole thing with a Sci-Fi device. Great story, if confusing at times. It implies a lot about the main character's life that it never explains. That, and the final Sci-Fi twist give a reader something to think about even when the book is closed, even when it is done. And the factually accurate pirate stuff isn't used like a lesson, only included as it serves plot and character. Very professional entertainment ****

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell has his formula down. The list of his works in the front of Sword Song threatens to spill onto a second page, which shows how prolific he is. From the Sharpe series to the archer/grail stories he's pushed back to the dawn of "English" history for stories of the West Saxon King Alfred. The main character is Uhtred, a Saxon raised by Danes. He loves the Danes, hates Christianity, and is bound by oath to serve Alfred. Great adventure set in essentially accurate history (I theorize that Cornwell and others of his ilk write as they do as a way to get paid to read about time periods and people that interest them). ****

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu

I sort of lied about reading a comic book next.
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu tells the story of the rise and change of the comic-book industry in the post-war years, along with the history of attempts to blame social ills on comic books, climaxing with Frederick Wertham, the Kefauver commission, and Bill Gaines's ill-fated attempt to stave off the disaster.
Hadju's work rests on an impressive depth and breadth of research, including primary interviews with comics writers and artists as well as consumers and boycotters.
I found myself skimming the details of the growing legal threats, knowing they were to inevitably lead to a collapse of the industry.
My interest was in the stories of the early days of creators who were to become legendary: Eisner, Kirby, Simon, Lee, Wally Wood, and more.
***
Hajdu also wrote Positively 4th Street, which is a fascinating and unique view of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez from early days to the paired motorcycle accidents of Richard Farina and Dylan (a central thesis of that work is that Dylan stole much of his persona from Farina; one comes away from the reading with the distinct impression Hajdu believes Dylan faked his accident, in imitation of Farina's fatal crash, as a way of withdrawing from a limelight he'd so aggressively pursued). Positively 4th Street helped me understand the ambitious drive of many top-level performers. The Ten-Cent Plague documents a broader social impact, but will connect with a narrower audience.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

For a while, I was switching back and forth between Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace and Shakespeare's Philosophy (see below). I think I've tired out my brain. They both seemed to have at least a tangential connection to my work, so I excused myself for spending an inordinate amount of time on summer days reading instead of gardening, housepainting, exercising or whatever by believing these books would make me incrementally better at my job. Consider the Lobster is a collection of essays. The title essay turns an assignment from Gourmet magazine to go to the Lobster Festival in Rockland, ME into a meditation on the morality of cooking lobster, sort of. The opening essay "Big Red Son" is about the porn industry. Reading "Up Simba" about John McCain's Straight Talk campaign of 2000 was pretty interesting in light of the current campaign.
I have to find a way to get my AP students to read "Authority and American Usage" as part of our classwork next year, though I don't know where I'll get the copies. Wallace is just so visibly rhetorical, and brings in so many connections that his writing will be great for AP.
The pleasure of diction and syntax, the breadth of connection, the occasional "aha!" all combine to make this at least **** But the strength is the weakness: the self-awareness that makes him bring debeaked chickens into the lobster article gets him critiquing his neighbors as they gather to watch news of 9/11; he's never purely in the experience, a piece of him is standing off flipping through the ramifications of it. After a while it is fatiguing. Reading David Foster Wallace is almost as much work as reading Colin McGinn. My next read is going to be a comic book. Here's an interesting blog entry on a couple of these essays (scroll down). Hold on! Go here to read a review (linked on that blog) that articulates the massive plusness coupled with minusness of DFW.

Shakespeare''s Philosophy by Colin McGinn

I probably would not have picked up Shakespeare''s Philosophy by Colin McGinn if I hadn't recently read Bryson's Shakespeare (see below), but I'm glad I did. It is the hardest reading work I've done in some time. I had to keep a vocabulary notebook for terms like epistemological, aporias, teleological, and veridically. The most thought-provoking theme he explicated was the inaccessibility of others' minds. I wrote a double-entry journal on a section of his Othello chapter on that. McGinn discusses Hamlet, MacBeth, Othello, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest. I feel the need to watch, read, or reread them all now.
How to rate this? "Of its type"? What is its type? Philosophy, I scarcely feel qualified to judge. Books on Shakespeare, not much more. Let me say that if you enjoy the plays and appreciate any kind of critical writing about them you will appreciate this book. If you read the Bryson and want to investigate the thinking this is a good book. So that makes it ****, but for a very limited audience, I'm sure.

One-Way Ticket by William G. Tapply

One-Way Ticket by William G. Tapply is another Brady Coyne mystery as reliable as any in the series. It may be more weakly plotted than some. It involves Boston mobsters, people with gambling addictions, and Brady's lover Evie leaving for San Francisco to be with her dying father. There are more than the usual number of references to Brady's friend J.W. Jackson, and the book is dedicated to Tapply's friend Philip Craig, the author of the Martha's Vineyard mysteries featuring J.W., who died last year.
Clearly elements of the story were inspired by and/or intended as tribute to Craig, which gives it a resonance and weight it wouldn't otherwise have. ***
If reading one of these is like watching a Red Sox game, this is like watching a not-especially well-played playoff game that they manage to win.

The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz

I stopped reading The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz after about 30 pages, thinking it was dwelling too much on mood and emotion. A couple days later I decided to give it a couple more chapters to catch me, and it did. Andrew Danner, a writer of series detective stories has been accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend, but acquitted on grounds of temporary insanity due to a brain tumor. He has amnesia and isn't even sure himself that he didn't kill her.
His ex-baseball-player friend tells him he's in a game; his editor tells him he's in a story. Even with all this cutesy, wink-wink stuff going on -- The chapter after the editor tells him, "What you need is something to kick down the front door, come barreling into the plot, crashing into the story," an LAPD SWAT team breaks down his door, and he's accused of another murder that he's able to ascertain he didn't commit -- the story rises to the level of a weak Robert Crais or Lee Child book (both of them provided blurbs for the cover, and Crais gets strongly Acknowledged). It seems Hurwitz has read his share of Michael Connolly too. So I'll say ***, but I feel a little dirty for doing so. That said, if you read editorial reviews, everybody seems to like it without any of the reservations I've expressed.

The Black Diamond Detective Agency by Mr. Eddie Campbell

The Black Diamond Detective Agency by Mr. Eddie Campbell is another "historical" graphic novel. Set in the "old" west and Chicago just on the cusp of the twentieth century. The hero is a gangster who teams up with the title agency to hunt down ex-partners who set him up, only to get back together with a woman who sold him out to them. Great story, distinctive style, echoes of the Pinkertons and of CSI. ****

Age of Bronze: Betrayal Part One by Eric Shanower

In Age of Bronze: Betrayal Part One, Eric Shanower continues his mega-epic retelling of the Trojan War. Scholarship, draftsmanship, and storytelling combine in a work for the ages. This book begins with the Greeks sailing (again) for Troy, and ends on the eve of battle. Much of the action takes place within Troy itself. Paris, Hector, Helen, and, of course, Priam are major characters. Among the Greeks the focus is on Achilles, Menelaus, and my long-time favorite, Odysseus (who is not admirable in this telling).
For lovers of graphic novels, and lovers of mythology. ****
Here's a link to Shanower's web site. Here's an extended review.

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson

As you'll read in most any extended review (like these two or this one) Shakespeare by Bill Bryson separates the little that is known about Shakespeare from the mass of ill-founded speculation and outright fantasy that has been written about him. Then Bryson builds a logical and entertaining portrait of the man and his times.
A slim volume, easy to read, not the best of Bryson, but still darn good. You have to be curious about Shakespeare or like Bryson's work (I'm a huge fan), or both. But if you want to know about Shakespeare, there's no reason to look elsewhere. ****
Here's an excerpt; check it out.

Lois on the Loose by Lois Pryce

Lois Pryce bails out on her job at the BBC to ride a dirt bike from Alaska to Argentina. In Lois on the Loose, she tells the story of the ride with a good-humored, funny style. It's a quick read, and a fun story. Her matter-of-fact way of just keeping on regardless of obstacles may lead you to underestimate just how tough she had to be to complete the ride. ***+
Click on the title to visit Pryce's website; when I did, I learned that she has since ridden through Africa, and has a book out on that trip, too.

All*Star Superman Volume 1 by Grant Morrison + Frank Quitely

A cover blurb on All*Star Superman Volume 1 by Grant Morrison + Frank Quitely reads, "A stirringly mythic, emotionally resonan and gloriously alternative take on the Man of Steel." And that captures it in a nutshell. These stories work in all the elements any long-time reader of Superman will know (some I didn't know about, but they were used in an allusive way). Very creative writing and art. I do think you have to know the back story at least a little, and like comic books, to appreciate it. ****

Clapton's Guitar by Allen St. John

I was surprised at how quickly and how deeply I became engrossed in Clapton's Guitar by Allen St. John. St. John is a guitar junkie who lusts after a guitar hand built by Wayne Henderson. In order to get his own guitar, he gets Henderson to build Clapton one.
As the Kirkus review blurb (click on the header) notes, the book weaves many threads into its tapestry. Great nonfiction. My one disappointment was that Clapton himself didn't reappear for the finale. ****
Here's a bonus: Wayne Henderson playing one of his guitars. Here's another.

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak is a history of Nancy Drew and the real people behind the name Carolyn Keene. Nancy Drew and Carolyn Keene were products of Edward Stratemeyer, as were the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys, and the Hardy Boys, among others. The series books were produced by ghostwriters from precise outlines created by Stratemeyer. Nancy Drew's first ghostwriter was Mildred Wirt Benson, a midwestern journalist. After Stratemeyer's death, his work, and eventually the writing of the Nancy Drew books, was taken over by his daughter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. This summary grossly oversimplifies the fascinating tale explicated by Rehak.
Nancy Drew became an icon of the feminist movement, and her two primary creators are shown to be Drew-like in their own ways.
I found a stash of Nancy Drew's at my aunt and uncle's house on an extended visit, and plowed through the pile. She probably started me on the track that led to the Hardys, the Three Investigators, Ellery Queen, Sherlock Holmes, and on and on. Anyone who ever enjoyed a Nancy Drew might enjoy this well-written book. ***
Click on the post title to read an interview with Rehak at her publisher's page, or here to go to an unofficial Nancy Drew page.

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child, another Reacher book, reassembles the remnants of his old special investigator squad to take vengeance on some unknown who has killed half of them. Of course, it can't be just about them, so there's a terrorism plot to foil, and tension between the two. For a few brief moments the macGuffin of the the terrorism bit made me think of the terrific Such Men are Dangerous by what the hell is his name? It's an apt echo, though: they both are stripped-down, action-packed narratives, with tough, tight-lipped, self-reliant protagonists. ****
Click on the header to read a NYTimes review; click on his name to visit Lee Child's home page.

A Killing in Comics by Max Allen Collins

A Killing in Comics is an over-simplified Roman a Clef turned murder mystery. Kind of fun, super light weight. ***
I'm worried about Max Allen Collins as a writer. I think he's, maybe trying to do too many things and not doing them as well as he used to. His early Heller books would all be at least four stars, but I couldn't even be bothered to finish Black Hats a couple months ago.

Napoleon's Pyramids by William Dietrich

Napoleon's Pyramids is an old-school pulp-style thriller with an historical setting. Ethan Gage, a young American adrift in revolutionary France, joins with a group of Savants on Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and finds love, friendship, principles, adventure, and the secret of the Great Pyramid. The sequel is called The Rosetta Key; I plan to read it. ****

Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing

Originally published in the New York Times as an essay, fatted up with thick paper and amusing illustrations, Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing is good advice that you'd almost have to not need for it to be useful. He doesn't explain anything, doesn't tell how. It would be more of an inspirational reminder than actual direction. It's funny that the little he says about some of his rules is to give an example of a good writer who breaks them. Fun to read, took about fifteen minutes. I'd give it to a writer friend as a gift, maybe. ***

Home from the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McLean

The Vinyl Cafe is a Canadian radio show that I've compared to "A Prairie Home Companion" when talking about this collection of stories. The stories are funny, sometimes obvious in the foreshadowing of humorous elements, like Dave mixing up the eggnog bowls at a Christmas party so that the kids get loaded and the adults stay unexpectedly sober. The humor ranges from such slapstick to low-key wistfulness. The book was a gift; I never would have chosen it myself, but it was easy to read and I'm glad I did. I'm not sure I'm a fit enough judge of "its type" to say ****, but I'm tempted to. Certainly anyone who has listened to the show and liked the stories as told on air would enjoy this book.

Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon

Los Alamos is a murder mystery set at the title location during the run up to the Trinity test. The cover blurbs make it sound better than I found it, but it was still very readable. I'm trying to recall the title of another WWII detective story I read recently; I think it was The Deadly Embrace. That book was set in London during the blitz, and featured a female protagonist. I remember it as more engrossing than this book, but maybe that's taste.
There's an element of James M. Cain to the obsessive love story that's woven in. The history is, as far as I can tell, meticulously researched (and I read a nonfiction about Los Alamos only about 18 months ago). Apparently Kanon's next book, The Prodigal Spy, is set in the McCarthy era and the 60's. I liked this one well enough to look for that one and hope it is just a little better. ***

Let Me Finish by Roger Angell

Angell reminisces about his life, his parents, his step-father E.B. White, The New Yorker, writing, editing, family, friends, and memory itself. He is a smooth writer with a lifetime of material to draw on. ****

The Brothers Bulger by Howie Carr

Meg listens to Howie most every afternoon, bought this book for her parents, borrowed it back, then I let the book languish on my "to be read pile," first before starting it, then for another couple of months after I got half done. That doesn't sound like much of a recommendation, does it? But the book was decent. There's probably some tipping point of knowing stuff about Boston at which the book would become too much of a rehash, but it must be pretty high. I got into recognizing names and places and events that I'd only vaguely noticed back in the 80's and 90's. The insight into Massachusetts's institutional corruption is amazing. I'll call it *** because the prose is pedestrian, and you'd have to care about that history and corruption to want to read it.

The Hunted by Elmore Leonard

Obviously this isn't the cover of the book, but isn't it a cool picture?
I guess after not finishing a book in the entire month of March, probably a first in my reading life, I'm revisiting some old reliables (each of which I started reading at some point last month -- I have a couple others in the works, too). I think I picked this Elmore Leonard up at a library sale a year ago, but someone in my family probably actually gave/loaned it to me.
I think it is better than the Amazon reviews the title links to give it credit for: how much complexity can you expect in what's basically a blown-up short-story? That's all any paperback original like this really was back in the late 70's when he wrote it. Leonard may have been ham-handed with the Rosen character, but I think he was trying for more than what these guys are crediting him for.
Oh, I'm all adrift here, and not saying anything about the story. Rosen is in Israel, hidden from some hoods he testified against. They find out where he is the same time that his corporate lawyer arrives because his company partners are squeezing him out of his business. So there's murder attempts and $200,000 in play, and a Marine about to muster out gets into the mix. Action and suspense. If you like Leonard it's a couple easy hours so I have to say *** and I don't mind doing it.

The Way Some People Die by Ross MacDonald

MacDonald first published this one in 1951, I probably first read it around 1973.
Archer sets out on a "prodigal daughter" job, reminiscent of Hammett's "wandering daughter" job in "Fly Paper," but in the end it's more like The Maltese Falcon. MacDonald hasn't fully hit his stride yet, but this is solid hard-boiled fare, and still better than most. It whetted my appetite to redevour the rest of his work. ****
"If Dashiell Hammett can be said to have injected the hard-boiled detective novel with its primitive force, and Raymond Chandler gave shape to its prevailing tone, it was Ken Millar, writing as Ross Macdonald, who gave the genre its current respectability, generating a worldwide readership that has paved the way for those of us following in his footsteps."

-- Sue Grafton, from her introduction to Ross Macdonald: A Biography
I respectfully differ with Grafton: If Hammett blazed a hard-boiled trail through a literary wilderness, Chandler roared down it in a powerful pre-war sedan, and MacDonald paved it into a superhighway. Everyone since then has done little more than ride a bicycle around on it.
Check out this tribute page from January magazine.

Mistress of the Art of Death

First of all, click on the title above, if only to view the intro, which gives you a sense of the book in a really cool way. I loved this book! Last night I was tearing up and chuckling out loud at the same time, multiple times while reading the last seventy pages.
Like CSI or Patricia Cornwell? You'll like this book. Like historical fiction? You'll like this book. It's set in the years immediately after Pillars of the Earth, so if you enjoyed that you'll like this one. Like a mystery with some romance? You'll like this book. This book is strong in all the areas that people who read for fun enjoy. *****
I wasn't going to say anymore -- like I said, click on the link -- but one of the things that's great about this book is the rounded reality of the female protagonist in a story that still manages to appeal to my (childish?) masculine taste for action. OK. Enough.

Marvel Civil War

I've been reading some of the books collecting various titles of the Marvel comics Civil War plot arc. Here's what a blogger where I swiped this image has to say describing it. I read Road to Civil War, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Captain America. It isn't only the resonance with current public debate, but the entwining and recollection of long-term plotlines that makes this work so powerful and moving. **** You have to like action-hero comics; but if you do, this is highly recommended.

Under Enemy Colors by S. Thomas Russell

Under Enemy Colors by S. Thomas Russell, set during the French Revolution, features a British Naval Lieutenant whose mother is French. In addition to those divided loyalties, he has no patrons of influence in the service. Posted under a "shy" captain in a ship whose men are disgruntled, he fights the French, the captain, and the men. Very much reminiscent of Patrick O'Brian, and a worthy successor. I look forward to more books in this series. ****
Here's something interesting: S. Thomas Russell is also Sean Russell, a fantasy writer. On his Sean Russell site he says a lot about how he wanted to write fantasy but not simply recreate Tolkien as so many others have done, but under this slightly different name (and there is no link from one author site to the other), he doesn't deny or acknowledge the direct influence of the Hornblower and Aubrey/Maturin books.

The 47th Samurai

Stephen Hunter is in Lee Child's league, maybe on a par with Robert Crais. All of them write with a cinematic style (Child and Crais have written for film/TV, Hunter reviews films for the Washington Post).
There's an obvious artificiality to The 47th Samurai that Hunter's best books transcend. He has written previously about the main character, Bob Lee Swagger, and about his father, Earl Swagger. This one is clearly inspired by samurai movies; most of it is set in modern-day Tokyo. **** though still far from his best, and may foreshadow a descent into a more formulaic approach.

Some Music-related Books

I've been neglecting to post entries here, and in the interim I cycled again through my Dylan/Springsteen/Beatles interests.
I always intended to read this book, and it was good. The story of Springsteen as he blew up from the clubs all the way to stadiums. The story is how he maintained his integrity and balanced his values through the process. *** -- I mean you got to like Springsteen to care about it.

You don't learn anything meaningful about Dylan or how he writes his songs or anything that matters by reading these interviews. I knew that would be true, but I read a bunch of them anyway. The more recent they are, the less bullshit they have in them. ** -- Don't depend on Dylan to give you any insight into himself.

I picked this up to look for one piece of information that proved not to be in it (I made a conclusion based on absence): A friend had told me that the guitar solos before "The End" on Abbey Road were played by Clapton, Harrison, and Page. Every official source says it's Harrison, McCartney, and Lennon. This book of the recording session logs makes a point of naming as many musicians as possible who came in to play on sessions; it doesn't say anything about this. My conclusion is that the official story is accurate.
Anyway, I got caught up reading a lot of other parts of the book. If you really want to go deep into the Beatles it is cool and fun. ***