Wrapping It Up

Astoudingly, even to myself, I managed to read 50 books in 2008. That's an average of 4 books a month, a rather brisk clip.

Fortunately I am one of those guys that has three or four books going at once; I ended 2008 still reading Ha Jin's Under the Red Flag, David J. Schow's Gun Work, Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren, Brett Easton Ellis' Lunar Park (on audio book), and started both Cesar Millan's A Member of the Family and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight since Christmas.

Still, being conscious of having to keep reading, to read interesting books, to not re-read books, and so on, convinced me that I have already conquered this nerd summit and will look for another challenge in 2009.

In the past, for nerd extreme sports, I have done two 24 Hour Comic Book challenges, one 24 Hour Zine challenge, and participated in marathon gaming sessions at Gen Con and other places. People have asked what I will be doing as far as reading goes, and I have answered "Read Smarter."

I have been away from literature for a while, after minoring in Humanities in college, and I think I need to get back to reading some good, solid stuff again. It doesn't hurt that my wife has challenged herself to read all of the Pullitzer Prize novels, which has piqued my interest.

For the record, my top five favorite reads of 2008 were:

1. Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

2. The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

3. The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo

4. The Wandering Ghost by Martin Limon

5. The Wheat Field by Steve Thayer

Though if I thought about it tomorrow I might pick three different ones; the top two will stay the same, methinks, but I also considered Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, George Axelrod's Blackmailer, Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon, Robert B. Parker's Resolution and Sebastian Faulks' Devil May Care.

It was the year I knuckled down and finally read Harry Potter, the year I re-discovered Philip K. Dick and discovered Samuel R. Delany, a year of Hard Case Crime and Ace Western Doubles and morose Scandinavian mysteries.

I hope this blog gave you some ideas for your own reading list; and thanks for checking in. You can see my ongoing adventures at my regular blog.

#50: Martian Time Slip by Philip K. Dick

I wanted to finish my 2008 reading challenge with Samuel Delany's Dhalgren to acknowledge my discovery of Delany's work this year, but I haven't finished up the chunky tome in time. However, I also sort of re-discovered Philip K. Dick this year, so it seems appropriate that I end with Martian Time-Slip.

This novel bears a lot of resemblance to a later novel of Dick's, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, that I also read this year. Both involve the hardscrabble lives of Martian colonists, with ruminations on time travel, psychology, and more. But where Eldritch was looser and more hallucinatory, Time Slip is denser, more somber, more filled with philosophical ideas. A worthwhile read, and I understand it will be part of the next Library of America edition of Dick's work.

I borrowed this from Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#49: Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks

James Bond chases after a madman with a byzantine scheme to thwart the British Empire, and helps a lovely lady along the way, in Sebastian Faulks' bracing thriller Devil May Care.

Devil May Care is a pitch-perfect return to Bond adventures, after a hiatus, released to celebrate Ian Fleming's 100th birthday. Whereas the Bond adventures of John Gardner and Raymond Benson took place in the modern era, Faulks picks up exactly where Fleming left off in the swinging 60s.

And Faulks has all of the details right (at least the ones I can remember, being hooked on the originals around my middle school era) from Bond's "salt and pepper" showers to his favorite drinks and weapons. Naturally, Bond squares off against a strange bad guy with a deformity (in this case, a monkey's hand) with an equally strange henchman (in this case, a Viet Cong torturer called Chagrin).

I found this one thoroughly enjoyable throughout and hope that Faulks writes further Bond novels. Recommended for fans.

I borrowed this one from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#48: No House Limit by Steve Fisher

Chilly little character study, in the addictive Hard Case Crime pulp paperback series, features an independent casino owner in the early days of Las Vegas who runs up against the mob and, when he doesn't back down, finds himself beseiged by a famous gambler backed by mysterious forces.

Author Steve Fisher is probably best known for the definitive noir I Wake Up Screaming (a favorite of mine), but he was a busy writer and I always enjoy his pulp stories when I come across them. This one draws a distinct portrait of that era in Vegas and includes several characters based on real people. A satisfying read throughout, with some really adept writing.

I bought this one in a mighty swoop of Hard Case Crime with a gift certificate that, I think, I either got for my birthday or anniversary. A nice compliment to the Hard Case Crime series.

#47: Diary by Chuck Palahniuk

Skin-crawling horror about a young woman, living with her husband's family in a close-knit island community, whose artistic abilities come to life with ominous consequences.

After having my brain flayed by Chuck Palahniuk's latest, Snuff, I went right back to the Kool-Aid bowl for more. This outing surprised me by being more subdued than the last one I read, though with plenty of surprises. Palahniuk is a clever writer, fashioning an interesting epistolary novel focused on a "coma diary" that the protagonist writes to her unconscious husband, who narrowly survived a suicide attempt. The storytelling is creepy-crawly thoughout, with a surprising denouement. Despite my earlier misgivings, I have enjoyed both Palahniuk novels I have read to date.

Diary compares favorably to Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby with a splash of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and a whiff of the original British film version of The Wicker Man. If this sends a chill up your spine, by all means go looking for this one.

I listened to a very good audiobook version read by Martha Plimpton that I checked out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#46: Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk

Dark-humored tale by cult writer Chuck Palahniuk features three actors preparing to participate in a historic porn shoot, gradually revealing their interesting backstories through conflicting perspectives.

I couldn't decide if I was too old or too young to read this aggressively outlandish, adult story featuring rape, incest, child molesting, murder, suicide, and not one but two unlikely incidents of corpses being sexed back into life.

That being said, I liked Palahniuk's writing style, and he is briming with ideas. I could see how he has drawn such a following from Fight Club forward, and I would--cautiously--approach another of his novels. Interesting for (very discriminating) readers.

I listened to a good audio book version on loan from Morrison-Reeves Library. I kept it under a towel on the back seat in case anybody glimpsed the cover through the windshield!

#45: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Next-to-last in the Harry Potter series (as read by possibly the last person on Earth to read it) focuses less on the scholastic goings-on at the academically suspect Hogwarts than on the ongoing battle against Lord Voldemort and the Death-Eaters, who have pledged to destroy our teen protagonist. This outing also spends a lot of time in a parallel story with Harry and his mentor, the wizard Dumbledore, exploring the mysteries of Voldemort's upbringing.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, despite its length, is a fast and entertaining read; I laughed out loud in several places, and continually enjoyed how Rowling plucked at threads from all the other books in the series. It was so much fun, in fact, that it wasn't until about three-fourths of the way through that I realized that nothing much had happened at all. The last quarter is an explosive battle royale with a fairly surprising body count, including one of the major characters (one of my favorites, who I hope appears as a ghost or in flashbacks or something in the last book, or I fear a loss of steam).

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana, in the excellent audio book series by the incomparable Jim Dale.

#44: His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

A British Navy captain engages in a skirmish with one of Napoleon's ships and ends up capturing a coveted Dragon's egg. Before he knows it, the dragon hatches and bonds to him, and our loyal captain finds himself reluctantly joining England's Aerial Corps, where he brings a bit of spit and polish to the rank and file while deepening his friendship to his unique ward.

Absolutely engaging and entertaining first novel in a series by Naomi Novik is touted as being a little bit Christopher Paolini meets Jane Austen, but I think (for genre fans) a more nuanced comparison would be Anne McCaffrey meets Patrick O'Brian. His Majesty's Dragon sports a fully-realized fantasy world with interesting historic trappings.

I bought this one for a shiny quarter at a library book sale but immediately went out and bought the second one with a Books A Million gift card my wife gave me for our anniversary. I haven't had a chance to start it yet, though, because my mother tore through the first one and snatched the second out of my hand.

Recommended for genre fans.

#43: Priest by Ken Bruen

Relentlessly downbeat noir from Irish writer Ken Bruen picks up where he left off with highly tarnished detective Jack Taylor at the end of The Dramatist; coming back from a nervous breakdown after accidentally contributing to the death of a child in his care.

Things don't get much rosier from there, as Jack starts to look into the beheading of a pedophile priest and tries to help a friend with a stalker, all the while struggling against alcoholism.

Fairly rough pavement, as one might suspect, but Bruen writes in a dark-humored vein favorably reminiscient of Roddy Doyle, if the author of The Snapper and The Commitments were to turn to hard-boiled detective fiction. But I enjoy Bruen's style and plotting, right up to another punch-in-the-gut finale, and would recommend him to readers who think the Hard Case Crime series is too light and cheery.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana, and read it at a good clip.

#42: Mad River by Donald Hamilton

Sturdy western by Donald Hamilton, the author of the excellent (and today, I think somewhat underrated) Matt Helm spy series, features a rancher fresh out of Yuma (after serving a stretch for a crime he didn't commit) having problems fitting back into town.

Although we have the usual Western templates--the wise older man, the fiery woman, the young hothead, and so on--Hamilton writes clear-eyed and often cool-hearted prose. Mad River also features a rather startingly bloodthirsty denouement before all is set to rights.

I did not know Hamilton had written in the Western genre and found this outing highly agreeable. I nabbed this paperback for a shiny quarter at a flea market and craft bazaar on a sunny weekend outing.

#41: The Wandering Ghost by Martin Limon

Two military policemen in 1970s Korea search for a missing female MP, and uncover her ties to a string of murders at the wintry edge of the DMZ, in Martin Limon's military mystery The Wandering Ghost.

Limon's two protagonists, Sueno and Bascomb, follow their own sometimes offbeat code of honor more than strict military protocols as they move through the Red Light districts and the army's corridors of power with equal ease. Sueno, the narrator, remains more reflective, while Bascomb is somewhat more prone to give in to both carnal and violent desires. They bring to mind two of my favorite characters in mystery fiction, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, the Harlem policemen who run rampant through Chester B. Himes' memorable detective novels.

Limon also has a real knack for a time and place, reminding me again of some of my favorite authors, Walter Mosely, Michael Connelly, and Ross Macdonald. Limon's stint as an MP in Korea during the time period, uncovered with a little light googling, is obviously what gives the mystery this weight.

I was an exchange student in Asia way back in 1987 and like to seek out fiction that takes place in countries I visited. I had never heard of Martin Limon before grabbing this from the library on a whim, but will look for more books in the Sueno and Bascomb series.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#40: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter gets a heaping helping of teen angst in this installment, trying to figure out girls as well as murderous wizards in the fifth installment of the long-running series.

Although I don't think Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix held the dramatic tension of the prior two entries in the series, this novel does include who I think is (to date) the series' greatest villain in Dolores Umbridge, a sickly-sweet-acting teacher with a cruel streak who rises to prominence at the Hogwarts School as Harry's stock continues to plunge. Umbridge does help fill the gaps left by the lack of some of the other memorable characters, including Dumbledore, Hagrid, and Sirius Black, gone for unfortunately long stretches of the narrative.

I did enjoy how the storyline continues to pick up threads and minor characters from earlier novels to create its own rich, full world. I still find interest in the depictions of the casual cruelty of the British boarding school, though Harry Potter fans I have spoken to generally don't agree that Hogwarts, when looked at in a clear-eyed fashion, is a rather poorly-run and shabby-appearing school.

As with the other Harry Potter novels, I listened to the very good audio book version by Jim Dale, checked out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#39: The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

A racial incident between teens that leads to murder in 70s Washington, D.C. reverberates in the lives of the adult survivors in George Pelecanos' compelling The Turnaround.

Although Pelecanos is often billed as a crime fiction writer, I have found his work a bit more philosophical, with few easy answers and fewer pat conclusions. I enjoyed his previous two novels, Drama City and The Night Gardener, and find here a lot of similiar themes, including parallel storytelling with events in the past and using Washington D.C. as almost a character onto itself. Pelecanos has a clipped style, but a knack for dialogue and interesting characterizations.

Pelecanos is a worthwhile read, and I will be on the lookout for his next novel.

#38: Short-Trigger Man by Merle Constiner

Former gunslinger turned barkeep gets framed for a murder and has to unholster his guns once more in Merle Constiner's agreeable Western Short-Trigger Man.

Constiner's sure-handed plotting, leavened by some surprisingly wry humor, made this an enjoyable read.

I have heard pulp writer Merle Constiner's name used in warm terms by fans but was only modestly impressed by the first novel of his I found (reviewed earlier). There were many similarities between the two novels, including a hard-headed protagonist with his own code of honor, a spitfire love interest, and an older, wiser man who helps out the hero. There is another Constiner on the flip side, so I will have to see if this trend continues. Constiner's personal story is interesting, so I keep looking for his work; and Short-Trigger Man I would recommend to fans.

This edition was again part of an Ace Double Western that I found for a quarter at a street fair. The pages were falling out as I read it, but I felt compelled to soldier on.

#37: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

Excellent genre-bender from Michael Chabon (whose The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay remains one of my modern-era faves), about a washed-up cop who takes umbrage at a junkie's murder in the very flophouse he resides in. With his reluctant partner, and his ex-wife/commanding officer breathing down his neck, he unearths a wider conspiracy.

Against this background, with its noir conventions tracing a direct line back to Raymond Chandler, is an alternate future based on a real WWII-era plan to create a Jewish homeland in Sitka, Alaska. Chabon does some intricate and compelling world-building that again recalls a great writer in Philip K. Dick and his The Man in the High Castle.

I listened to an excellent audiobook version read by Peter Riegert. Although Jim Dale's Harry Potter readings are without peer, I would put Riegert's reading in my top five audiobook recordings I have encountered (with Paul Giamatti's presentation of Dick's A Scanner Darkly right there as well). This audiobook was given to me by a friend, and I plan on donating it to the Farmland Public Library.

Highly recommended.

#36: Zero Cool by John Lange

A doctor at a European conference is forced to perform a mysterious autopsy, then spends the rest of his trip outrunning a bevy of bloodthirsty pursuers in John Lange's Zero Cool.


I may be the last person to know this was actually written by Michael Crichton back in his peanut-butter days of the late 60s. Zero Cool is a suprising departure, not nearly as dense or intense as his later, more well-known work. Our physician protagonist is as quippy as any PI of the time, is accompanied by several mysterious women and a strange, colorful supporting cast of baddies, and jetsets around several exotic locales. The combination reminds me of the James Bond movies of the era more than any sort of medical thriller. A pretty fun read overall.


I found this one in a library book sale for a shiny quarter, with a silver, 70s-style cover. It is more recently seen as part of the great Hard Case Crime series with a more appropriately retro look.

#35: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Simon Armitage

The classic tale of Sir Gawain of King Arthur's court, and the knight's face-off with a mysterious, seemingly immortal foe, gets a muscular new translation from poet Simon Armitage.

I am a fan of Seamus Heaney's landmark translation of Beowulf and thought this one followed in its footsteps, from the hard-bitten prose (mirrored on facing pages with the original language) right on down to the clunky, rusty armor on the cover. But it will be hard to beat Heaney's idea of changing the traditional storytelling opening of "Once Upon A Time..." to "So..."

Still, Armitage's translation stands on its own merits. He has created a clean and easy read, and the storytelling is highly interesting for its various subtexts and nuances; overall an offbeat tale in the Camelot pantheon of stories.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#34: Money Shot by Christa Faust

A former porn star stumbles into a secret, illegal side of the sex trade and winds up--after a murder attempt--seeking revenge against those responsible.

Christa Faust's Money Shot is a contemporary tale in the Hard Case Crime series, a pulpy paperback line which, for the most part, features lost noir classics with retro covers. Faust's storytelling stands up well alongside her peers and is even more hard-nosed than some; and in the Hard Case Crime line, that's saying something. Like most of the line, Money Shot is not for the faint-hearted, but is well worth reading.

I read this on the recommendation of my pal Michael, who is a fan of Faust and loaned me his copy.

#33: The Wheat Field by Steve Thayer

A small-town deputy in rural Wisconsin finds himself the main suspect in a double homicide that leads him to become an unwilling accomplice to a larger conspiracy in Steve Thayer's riveting thriller The Wheat Field.

I picked this up on a whim at the Farmland Public Library and found myself an instant fan of Thayer, an author I had not heard of before. Deputy Pliny Pennington is a resonant character, a dark angel with sexual hang-ups and killing urges but his own moral code. The early 60s locale is strongly rendered as well. There are plenty of shocks in the storytelling, both pleasant and unpleasant. I enjoyed Thayer's writing style, probably most reminding me of Jim Thompson or James M. Cain.

I had been moseying along with fun, good enough reads for a while until this one jolted me into wakefulness again. I would strongly recommend The Wheat Field to thriller fans and will be nosing around for more of Thayer's writing.

#32: You Could Call It Murder by Lawrence Block

British ex-pat Roy Markham looks for a missing girl in a small, snowy New England college, quickly peeling back the veneer and exposing dark doses of blackmail and scandal.

An early detective yarn from Lawrence Block, this one featuring another one-off P.I. Curiously, a little googling turned up that the novel was a tie-in to an ill-fated television show that went off the air before the book came out.

Perhaps because I read this back to back with another Block in a matter of days on vacation (see previous entry), I saw a lot of connections between Markham and the other protagonist, Ed London. Both are more highbrow detectives not afraid to get their hands dirty, both centered in New York but frequently traveling.

In the end, a pair of entertaining novels in a collection called "Five Great Novels by Lawrence Block" that I purchased for five dollars on the specials rack at a San Diego bookstore.

#31: Coward's Kiss by Lawrence Block

Mystery writer Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder mystery series is a notable achievement (with When the Sacred Ginmill Closes being one of my favorite mysteries of all time), but back in Block's peanut-butter days he penned this potboiler with P.I. Ed London. London is a somewhat highbrow detective who, in the end, isn't above helping his brother-in-law ditch a dead mistress. Naturally this becomes more complicated, and London gets drawn into the dead woman's web.

Coward's Kiss is a muscular, fast-moving detective novel, but to date London has unfortunately never returned in a follow-up case.

My wife spotted this one in a bookstore in San Diego, in a collection of "Five Great Novels by Lawrence Block" at the good-bye price of five dollars. I am starting on the next one right away on this sunny vacation.

#30: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

Trippy sci-fi, with religious overtones, as a man returns from ten years in deep space with a new drug he is eager to try on the gloomy, drafted colonists of Mars. A precog working for a rival company may be the only person able to stop the spread of the drug, which has possibly alien origins.

I decided to take a break from reading the great work of Samuel R. Delany and refresh my palette with another worthy contemporary, Philip K. Dick. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is one of Dick's notable works that I had missed to date. It features a lot of Dick's themes and plotting, notably his ability to take everyday people and set them against larger events. There is also a character in this novel that is similiar, in name and mannerisms, to a character in A Scanner Darkly. Some of the religious thinking of Valis and other work is meditated on here. But I would definitely say Three Stigmata is one of the more hallucinatory Dick novels I have read to date, and PDK fans know that's saying something.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana. It was part of the Library of America's excellent Philip K. Dick edition, a present I bought for my son and friends this past Christmas, in the way that people buy presents for others that they secretly want for themselves.

#29: Guns at Q Cross by Merle Constiner

A cattleman comes to town ahead of his herd, planning to sell to a prosperous Idaho rancher, and almost immediately draws the ire of every local resident, culminating in a shootout the first night. Our cattleman hero, with his own sometimes peculiar pride and code of honor, bulldogs along until he busts open a rustling gang, breaking its grip on the town.

Guns at Q Cross is the slender side of an Ace Western double that I picked up for a shiny quarter at a library book sale. I had never heard of author Merle Constiner, but a little googling led me to find out he was a well-regarded midwestern pulp writer (from the neighboring state of Ohio) who, late in the life, turned to westerns. This one featured some interesting writing and some stretches of slapdashery, which I suspect was from having to write at a pretty good clip for Ace. Overall a solid oater with some interesting Idaho locations.

On the other side is a longer western novel by Tom West, who some people suspect was actually Merle Constiner as well. I will flip it over and keep reading.

#28: The Marshal of Pioche by Nelson Nye

This Western yarn was the other side of an Ace Double from Ray Hogan's Panhandle Pistolero (reviewed earlier) and was the first book I read from prolific writer Nelson Nye. The cover promises a "lead pay-off for a tin star in this silver town," which in and of itself is hard to resist.

But a bit hard to live up to. Nye writes this one in a first-person dialect as young, hotheaded Arnie Page drifts into town looking for adventure and promptly gets off a lucky shot at the town's top gun. Suddenly Arnie is the new town marshal, and he spends most of the rest of the book's brief page count trying to keep from getting killed while helping out a fiery redhead (as if Westerns boast any other kind).

Agreeable enough, but not much to it, and your mileage may vary with Nye's dialect as Arnie uses his shootin' irons 'gainst a bunch of owlhoots and sidewinders. I bought this one for a shiny quarter at a library book sale. I have a couple more that feature Nelson Nye's work, so I will see what I think as I work my way thr0ugh them.

#27: Limitations by Scott Turow

Drowsy legal thriller from Scott Turow, whose Presumed Innocent was an early, and perhaps best-known, work. Turow has been hammering out solid mysteries featuring lawyer protagonists ever since, including this one, which was serialized for a magazine and then expanded into a novel.

A judge is hearing arguments in a brutal gang rape, and soon begins to recall some repressed memories of an incident he was involved with himself in college. Meanwhile, his wife is fighting cancer and a mysterious stalker is sending the judge threatening emails.

Despite the description, the storytelling doesn't retain a lot of dramatic tension, though is certainly interesting (and, for fans, features characters and situations from earlier Turow novels). Probably more for followers of Turow (which I have been one, more or less) and of passing interest to others.

I listened to this on a good audiobook given to me by a friend.

#26: Resolution by Robert B. Parker

Hard-bitten follow-up to Parker's western Appaloosa features our two tarnished but honorable former lawmen, Virgil and Everett, getting caught up in a war between farmers, miners, and townspeople in a fledgling town.

Robert B. Parker's latest has the trappings of a standard oater but is written in an engaging style with interesting characters. The easygoing Everett Hitch is our narrator, watching as his friend Virgil Cole, legendary with a gun but susceptible to the p-whip, struggles with morality after shooting a man in anger.

I was eager to find this sequel and read it at a very fast clip. To say Parker wrote this one in a laconic style is an understatement. The chapters are short and the dialogue terse, to say the least. A very muscular Western, and apparently one more is on the way to make a trilogy. I have always liked Parker's Spenser detective novels and this is a nice change of pace.

I checked this one out from the Farmland Public Library.

#25: Nova by Samuel R. Delany

I didn't plan it this way, but I'm glad my 25th book--halfway there--was by Samuel R. Delany, who I discovered, more or less, this year and has quickly become one of my favorite sci-fi authors.

Nova is another one of his award-winning novels from the 60s; the last one he wrote, after a prolific bout of writing, before falling silent for a number of years. And I would have to rank it, along with his Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, as one of my favorite sci-fi novels.

This one features a rag-tag spacefaring crew under the sway of a half-mad captain who has the seemingly crazy idea of flying straight into the heart of a nova. As usual Delany is brimming with ideas and includes his usual, rather curious motifs (an obsession with chewed fingernails, rope belts, people who only wear one shoe). But this sweeping space epic also includes brushstrokes from the hunt for the Holy Grail and the Tarot.

In doing some research into the history of Nova, it seems that the book was rejected for serialization in a leading sci-fi magazine of the time because it features a black protagonist and several other multi-ethnic characters. A real shame, as I found it to be a great read.

Somehow, in my 40s, I have begun to embrace hot foods, rare meat, and the previously-scorned "hippie-fi" of the 1960s. I find Delany's writing highly engaging and full of unique ideas, with the added benefit, in this case, of Nova being flat-out fun high adventure. Recommended.

I read this from a big lot of Delany I bought off of ebay, and I am sure I will grab another out of the stack.

#24: Bangkok 8 by John Burdett

An uncorruptable Thai cop, following his own rather bent Buddhist code, goes on a quest for vengeance through the ultra-seedy underbelly of Bangkok after the death of his partner.

John Burdett's edgy police thriller Bangkok 8 is an uneasy mix of philosophy and cold-hearted violence, veined with dark whimsy (if there is such a thing) and brought to an absolutely chilling denouement. I found the millieu Burdett created fascinating and his lead character's outlook unique. Although obviously not Thai, Burdett has spent time there and I felt (having traveled some in Asia myself) that he seemed to have a good eye for the details.

I bought this one at a used booksale for a quarter and it was a pretty raggedy-looking copy, but I was compelled to read it and scare myself to death while my own daughter was on an exchange program in Thailand. Basically I picked it up on a whim, and later learned this is the first of a series featuring the same Thai cop. I will keep looking for more of Burdett's work.

#23: Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay

Dexter in the Dark is the third book in the series about daytime police specialist and nighttime serial killer Dexter, a cheery Miami native and all-around nice guy whose "Dark Passenger" drives him to hunt the city's dark underbelly. Dexter's peppy narration is set in surprising contrast to plenty of gore and dark humor, coming off somewhere between Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley and Hannibal Lecter.

In this outing, Dexter's "Dark Passenger" surprisingly flees at the outset in the face of the type of horrible crime he would typically enjoy. In an uneasy narrative device, Dexter relies on his girlfriend's young son, a budding serial killer in his own right, to help ferret out what's happened and teach the boy a moral code akin to the one Dexter was infused with (by a foster father who was also a cop).

The first two Dexter novels were tense police thrillers, strangely comedic while embracing a lizardlike cool, as the detached, clinical--yet oddly charming--Dexter dispatches those worse than him. But this time out the storytelling takes a confounding turn that, even as I kept reading, I was thinking "this isn't what I think it is."

But it was, as Lindsay takes a left turn into the supernatural, introducing demonic possession and other fantasy trappings that were absolutely absent from the first novels in trying to explain Dexter's "Dark Passenger," which had previously been attributed to childhood trauma (and, I suspect, that was plenty for any reader). It was as if Mickey Spillane suddenly had Mike Hammer fighting the Great Cthulhu, a sharp twist from Jonathan Kellerman to Dean Koontz without any notice of a fork in the road.

I have digested this one a bit and am still trying to guage the scale of this unfortunate misstep. I guess I will have to wait and see the next one to learn if Lindsay can right the ship. In googling and finding others who felt the same shock and surprise I learned that the popular TV series is veering away from the books in its next season, probably for the best.

I listened to this one on audio book on loan from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#22: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

After Dark follows two young people who meet in the late hours of a Tokyo night and spend the time until dawn revealing bits and pieces of themselves in Haruki Murakami's whimsical, magical, yet sometimes maddening novel.

Although I thought Murakami had the rythyms of staying up all night down right, not to mention the denizens you find there, I was unhappy with the open-ended conclusion and some of the writing conceits. Perhaps it was in the translation from Japanese, but I found the storytelling mannered and often written, curiously enough, like a screenplay.

However, I thought Murakami had a unique style and I know some of this other novels have been very well-received. I will mark this one down as interesting if not entirely satisfying and perhaps seek out another.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#21: Panhandle Pistolero by Ray Hogan

I have always dabbled in Westerns, lantern-jawed Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey as a kid, revisionist Elmore Leonard and Loren Estleman later, a smattering of whatever these days, Elmer Kelton and Cormac McCarthy and the new Robert Parker. I went to a big library book sale and found a stack of Ace Western Doubles, which I bought author and title unseen. I have always collected Ace Doubles when I can find them but had never found any of the Westerns, so I went away happy at a quarter a shot.

Later I saw one was by Ray Hogan. Hogan is one of those guys whose names I recognized, who I have not sought out but read and enjoyed from time to time. This one starts off nicely with our hero bringing a corpse back to the sheriff even though the dead man, who our hero recently filled with hot lead, was the only person who could get him out of a frame. The story then jumps back in time to tell how our hero ended up in this tight spot with only his shootin' irons and his trusty sidekick Cholo for help. Panhandle Pistolero hits all the right beats, but has some nice twists and more of the rethinking of those 60s-era Westerns. Hogan is a muscular, clear-eyed writer and this was a pleasant, easy, read.

I'm going to flip this one over and check out Nelson Nye's Marshall of Pioche next.

#20: The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo

I have been burrowing through stacks of morose Scandinavian mysteries lately, so I thought surely I should tackled The Redbreast, voted the best Norwegian crime novel of all time. And, falling in line with my Norwegian brethren, I would recommend it highly.

The unfortunately named Harry Hole is a hard drinking, rule-busting Oslo cop whose bosses generally turn a blind eye because of his knack for solving crimes. He reminds me favorably of one of my favorite series characters, Michael Connelly's similiarly-named Harry Bosch. Unlike the more somber Scandinavian writers, Jo Nesbo infuses Hole with a fair amount of sardonic humor, a welcome relief from the somewhat navel-gazing detectives that populate these works.

The Redbreast is intricate but fast-moving, hard-nosed but philosophical, sprawling but intimate. The story jumps from a case involving modern Neo-Nazis to the Eastern Front of World War II, where Norwegians fought alongside Nazis against the Russians, and the terrible ties that bind these events. I enjoyed the plotting and characters and learned a lot about Norway's history during this time period.

Nesbo has been very popular overseas, and I hope this overture to English-reading audiences brings more translations of his work here. Recommended.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana and had to renew it several times to muscle through the 500-page-plus work.

#19: Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie

Most of the great line of Hard Case Crime paperbacks are lost American noir classics reissued with great period covers, but Kiss Her Goodbye is a rare, but welcome, exception; it is a modern crime novel that takes place in Scotland.

Joe Hope is an Edinburgh legbreaker who has done a lot of bad things; but is not responsible for the murders of his wife and daughter, though the local constables are eager to put him in the nick. Joe ends up having to rely on a novice attorney, a hardened hooker, and a guy who runs a writer's colony (!) to clear his somewhat tarnished name.

Guthrie writes in a tough, sardonic style with bursts of brutal action. I enjoyed this modern novel greatly and think it stands in good company with its classic counterparts.

I bought this in a big lot of Hard Case Crime paperbacks off of ebay and have been merrily working my way through them.

#18: Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins mystery series is one of my favorites, and I always grab up the next one as soon as it hits the shelves. Rawlins is a sort-of private detective whose cases are set against the backdrop of real events, starting in post-war Los Angeles to the current entry, Los Angeles shortly after the Watts riots (which featured heavily in his last work). With his hardboiled plots and socio-political backdrops of a time and place, I find Mosley's work an engaging mix of Ross Macdonald and Chester B. Himes.

This crackling story has Rawlins fighting a war on two fronts, trying to free his loyal friend (and genial sociopath) Mouse from a police frame-up while also finding out what happened to a new friend, Vietnam vet Christmas Black, who brought a lot of baggage (and a Vietnamese orphan) back with him. Steady readers of the series will get updates on all of the usual characters as well as a few new ones, including the mysterious Blonde Faith of the title.

I have nothing but praise for this notable series and look forward to what's next. I checked this one out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it at a good clip.

#17: The Princess of Burundi by Kjell Eriksson

A former low-level street tough gets tortured to death at Christmastime, setting the gloomy detectives of the Uppsala (Sweden) police force in motion to catch a killer. Meanwhile, the dead man's criminal brother starts a parallel investigation.

Kjell Eriksson's first novel translated into English is called an Ann Lindell mystery, though detective Lindell is on maternity leave during most of the action, leaving the police work to her partner Ola Haver. But Haver really isn't the main character either; with a big cast of interesting police officers the book feels most like a Swedish 87th Precinct (which Eriksson makes a nod to himself when somebody tells Haver that he is "no Carella," a reference to Ed McBain's lead detective).

I have been enjoying this boom in Scandinavian mysteries lately just for a change of pace; as opposed to hardboiled American mysteries, when a fellow policeman is abruptly killed, Haver cries and helps lead the squadroom in a discussion of changes in social and democratic trends in Sweden. Even the hardened beat cop is introspective in Uppsala. But I probably would be too, based on the casual discussions of thirty below weather and snow so deep it threatens to crack building roofs (actually a critical plot point).

Eriksson's mystery starts off a bit ruminative but soon snaps awake to a crackling conclusion. I ended up enjoying the read quite a bit and will be seeking out the next book in the series.

I checked this one out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana, and stopped yesterday to put a hold on the next book by Eriksson.

#16: Flight by Sherman Alexie

A troubled foster kid, half in the white world and half in the world of the American Indian, stands on the brink of a violent act when he is suddenly whisked away on a vision quest spanning the long, troubled history of relations between the two peoples. The resulting journey, corrosively funny and painful, is at the core of Sherman Alexie's new novel.

Sherman Alexie's Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is one of my favorite short story collections in recent memory, and Alexie has written a lot of powerful novel-length fiction as well (and according to my wife, who saw him speak at a conference, he is also a strong public speaker).

In Flight, Alexie has developed a well-realized protagonist and offered much food for thought. I think Flight would have been a very good young adult novel except for the steady profanity and very mature situations (including rape, child abuse, and murder) that would undoubtedly keep it out of the school library. But it is a good solid read and adds to Alexie's growing reputation. Recommended for those interested in the subject matter.

I grabbed Flight off the shelf at the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana, and cooked right through it.

#15: Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

Steve Martin is an interersting figure; he came to prominence acting like a goofball as a standup comedian, then transitioned to warm fatherly roles in Hollywood movies, but has always displayed a dry, detached style in his writing (in The New Yorker and elsewhere).

A little of all of his personalities are on display in Born Standing Up, Martin's autobiography covering his peanut-butter days at Knott's Berry Farm working in a magic store to the very height of his popularity in the late 70s, just as he gets ready to step off the mountain and try movies.

It's an interesting read, as Martin has one foot in the "Old Hollywood" while tentatively feeling out the paradigm shifts of the late 60s and early 70s. Martin name-checks everyone from old vaudevillians to Janis Joplin to Johnny Carson to Richard Pryor with ease.

I enjoyed Born Standing Up, but would have liked more of it, both in detail and in page count. Perhaps a second autobiography, covering his Hollywood years, will be forthcoming.

I listened to the author read the audiobook (with some banjo picking included) and would recommend this version. I checked it out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#14: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Sprawling fantasy story, the fourth in the Harry Potter series (and showing more sophistication than its predecessors), centers around a European wizarding tournament between three magical schools, carried on while Harry's mortal enemy lurks behind the scenes.

I have enjoyed how Rowling's stories have grown in breadth and depth (along with, presumably, the young readers who grew up with them) and found this one the most engaging yet. Perhaps incidentally (to American readers, at least) I have also been interested in the glimpses of the casual cruelties and ramshackle trappings of British boarding school life (made more explicit in other British author's fiction, like Stephen Fry's The Liar).

I would say that Goblet of Fire is the first of the novels to really not be able to stand on its own, with a very open-ending conclusion; but tracking the growth of the characters has been surprisingly rewarding to me, the last person on Earth to read the Harry Potter series.

Interestingly, I happened to catch the movie version while snowbound in a hotel during the time I was listening to this. It was the first time I had revisited the movies since listening to the audio books, and until then didn't realize how much (including entire subplots and characters) were excised from the movie versions. Probably goes without saying, but surprising to see side-by-side for the first time.

I listened to the very good Jim Dale audiobook version, on loan from Morrison-Reeves Library, half of which I ingested in one long drive back and forth from Pennsylvania.

#13: Lucky at Cards by Lawrence Block

A card sharp gets into a friendly game between gigs, but soon sets his sights on the wife of one of the players; and when that happens in a Hard Case Crime novel, look out.

Lucky at Cards is an early hard-boiled novel from Lawrence Block, whose Matthew Scudder detective series I have followed for many years (with When the Sacred Ginmill Closes being one of my favorite mysteries of all time); but this is a reprint from Block's peanut-butter days, with one of those memorable Hard Case Crime covers. Hard Case Crime also reprinted Block's Grifter's Game, a decidedly downbeat slice of noir with similiar themes of luckless joes and man-hungry frails.

But Lucky at Cards is a bit more upbeat, and rockets along at an alarming clip as our tarnished hero first gets himself into a scheme to frame the husband and take his money, then finds himself in a frame that is pretty hard to get out of in return. Tension cranks up, and up, right to the end. This was definitely a pulp classic worth rediscovering, and welcome for fans of Lawrence Block.

I bought this one in a big lot of Hard Case crime books off of ebay, which I have been cooking through pretty steadily. I read this in about a day and a half over vacation.

#12: Kill Now, Pay Later by Robert Terrall

Brash, old-school private eye story, in the admirable Hard Case Crime series, has a smart-assed gumshoe trying to save his shredded reputation when a robbery/murder happens at a high-class wedding where he is supposed to be working security (though he saves time to chase a few dames, natch).

Definitely a product of its time, with lots of genial boozing, overheated secretaries, and a general disregard for gun control laws, with surprisingly frank elements (a stag party and a woman overcome by "reefer" playing important roles). Highly enjoyable, quick read, which I chewed through in a couple of days on vacation.

I bought this in a big lot of Hard Case Crime books from ebay. Now I am going to have to try to find more Robert Terrall, somewhere.

#11: The Blood Spilt by Asa Larsson

The second novel from Swedish crime writer Asa Larsson has lawyer Rebecka Martinsson still recovering from the events of Sun Storm when another religious figure in her hometown is slain, prompting local police to speculate whether a copycat killer is on the loose, and drawing Martinsson back to rural Kiruna.


The tension isn’t notched as high this time around, as we explore how this new murder impacts various lives and exposes long-held secrets. The Blood Spilt works better as a character study than a thriller, with a rather abrupt denouement tacked onto a generally ruminative narrative.


I have been enjoying this new spate of translations of popular Scandinavian mysteries for their different (although admittedly often gloomy) take on the genre and a chance to see other cultures; though Larsson’s latest isn’t the strongest place to start, though I am sure I will seek out the next in the series.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#10: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

Enjoyable sixties sci-fi romp from one of my favorite writers of the era, Samuel R. Delany.

Captain Wong is a poet and spacefarer brought in to solve the mystery of Babel-17, the secret language of an invading force in an interstellar war. Wong puts herself in the middle of the war while trying to crack the code, eventually teaming up with some space-pirates and having a number of wild adventures.

Delany's stories are always full of interesting ideas, with intricate world-building and challenging views. Babel-17 involves a lot of wordplay and shows Delany's interest in languages. It was recognized as a Nebula Award-winning sci-fi novel, another of Delany's works to receive the award. Another interesting aspect is that one of the characters in the story supposedly wrote Empire Star, which at one time Delany intended to be coupled with this novel in one of those now-legendary Ace Doubles.

A lot of readers compare Delany favorably to another of my favorites of the era, Philip K. Dick. Both are highly creative, though I think Dick is a more meat-and-potatoes writer and Delany a bit more philisophical. Both are great representatives of a spate of unique sci-fi of this time period.

I bought Babel-17 in a big lot of Delany paperbacks off of ebay, which I am slowly chewing through.

#9: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

The third in the insanely popular Harry Potter series, which I am finally coming around to, was the strongest book yet in the saga of a young wizard coming of age at a magical boarding school while evil forces mount against him.

In this installment, a mass-murdering wizard named Sirius Black escapes from the magical prison Azkaban, intent on seeking out Harry Potter. While these gears start moving, drawing Black closer to our young protagonist, Harry continues to deal with typical teen problems, school chums and school enemies and at least one very mysterious teacher (out of a whole lot of odd ones).

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban regained some of the dramatic tension I felt was lost in the author's sophomore book, and Rowling has done a good job in re-introducing, and then growing, a vast cast of characters (though this is the first of the three I would say wasn't entirely stand-alone). Rowling is a clever storyteller and spins an enjoyable yarn.

I have been listening to these via audio book one after the next, carried along by an exceptional performance by Jim Dale. I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#8: Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

Warren Ellis came in on that wave of British comic book writers (Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan among them) who specialized in "revisionist" comics with dark themes and more mature storytelling. Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Doom Patrol and others were some of the notable titles in that mid-80s-mid-90s heyday. But with DC Comics' Vertigo line and more the taste for this trend has never really died out. Some comic purists have embraced these revisionist stories (me, for instance) and some hate them (my brother, for instance). Ellis' Planetary is, in my mind, his cornerstone work, though I have liked streaks of Authority/Stormwatch and Transmetropolitan, among others.

Crooked Little Vein is Ellis' first novel, a darkly comic (verging on absurdist) take on the hard-boiled PI genre (with a dash of world-spanning espionage chucked in). Our tarnished hero is sent by a shadowy government figure to find the Lost Constitution of the United States, sending him on a sordid--and I do mean sordid--tour of America's underbelly. Ellis takes fairly obvious swipes at big-hatted Texans, la-la Californians, and button-down Midwesterners, but surprises with a number of shocks, leaving no taboo unturned from bestiality to child molesting to a few practices that--suffice to say--are hard to describe.

Although with the strong caveat that Ellis' writing is not for every taste, and at some points wasn't to mine, I enjoyed the humor and energy of the work and found it very readable. I will look forward to more of his fiction.

Having a hard time finding this one, I bought if off of ebay and read it at a pretty good clip.

#7: Dead Street by Mickey Spillane

I have been a big fan of the Hard Case Crime series, and was looking forward to this posthumously published work from Mickey Spillane, whose I, the Jury, when I first read as a teen, got me hungry for this genre. Spillane's huge popularity at one time, and some of his milestone work--which to me includes Kiss Me Deadly and Vengeance is Mine--marked a memorable career that I don't think is always recognized at present for what it once represented.

But Dead Street was written in his waning days (and was polished up my Max Allan Collins at Spillane's request), and lacks the punch of his white-hot years. We find the typical Spillane anti-hero, a retired cop (whose anger-management issues are looked on with vast approval by others, including swooning women) who finds out his supposedly long-dead girlfriend is alive, and is in hiding because of some secrets she carries. Naturally the ex-cop comes to her rescue, trusty .45 in hand.

I liked Spillane's ruminations on aging, but I felt the overall plot (which featured a well-oiled mafia machine and "atomic secrets") clanked fearfully. I think setting it during Spillane's writing heyday might have helped the overall tone of the piece and might have sat more comfortably on Spillane's shoulders. Still, an enjoyable read if not up to the heights Spillane had once reached, sharing the same fate as us all.

I bought this with a gift card to Books A Million that my daughter bought me for Christmas.

Digression

My wife is an English instructor, and she and her office mate decided to challenge each other to read every Pulitzer Prize-winning novel this year. The list dates back to the turn of the century and thus is fairly hefty. I perused it to see what I had read off of it and found I had only read 11 of them. I would have sworn it was more, and there were many on there I should have read or, even worse, are sitting on the many bookshelves all around my house. But here's what I have read from the list:

2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones

2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

1986 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

1984 Ironweed by William Kennedy

1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

1963 The Reivers by William Faulkner

1961 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1953 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

1952 The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

1939 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

All great reads, but I especially recall Ironweed, Lonesome Dove, and Kavalier & Clay.

#6: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

Having been the last person on earth to read the first Harry Potter book, I decided to catch up to society and immediately begin listening to the second in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, chronicling Harry's next year at the magical school Hogwarts. This time out the school is under seige as several students are attacked, and rumors of a long-lost "Chamber of Secrets" sweeps through the school. Harry comes under suspicion and ends up needing the help of an enchanted car, a magical pet bird, and a raggedy wizard's hat to defeat this latest threat to boarding school education.

I enjoyed this entry in the series, though couldn't help but feel it didn't have quite the dramatic tension of the first one. Any follow-up suffers from having the shine off the apple, and I think the fact that I know a bit of what happens movie-wise in Harry's feud with Lord Valdemort makes much of this one seem a bit tangential.

But Rowling keeps things percolating and brimming with wit, and Jim Dale's reading of this audio book is excellent. I immediately grabbed up the next one in the series when returning this one today to the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#5: Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon

Brightly entertaining swashbuckling-style adventure story that writer Michael Chabon (of The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay fame) admitted in an afterword that he wanted to title Jews with Swords. The story centers on two philosophical sell-swords who end up doing some inadvertent king-making, with plot twists spinning out from such things as a well-loved hat to an admirable elephant. Wryly-written high adventure in a vein reminiscent of Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste series.

The presentation of the novel is also interesting; it is bound like a Dumas-type novel and features period-style art by Prince Valiant artist Gary Gianni.

Recommended.

I checked this one out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana, and read it at a brisk clip.

#4: Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

My weekend sojourn into Michigan gave me a chance to finish up a book I have been working on for a while: Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany, a big, sprawling, astounding space opera.

Rat Korga is a slave who is the only survivor of the mysterious destruction of his planet, which begins to attract him an almost cultish following. Marq Dyeth is a galaxy-traveling negotiator from an affluent mixed human-alien family. How these two men meet and fall in love against the backdrop of the social and political wars between three distinct factions in the universe is the core of this imaginative tale.

Delany is a dense, creative writer, and I have been enjoying a batch of his books I bought from a lot on ebay after finding Empire Star in a collection at the library. I was interested in his writing as I have been on a Philip K. Dick kick lately, and several people suggested I seek Delany out. Everything I have read thus far has been rewarding, but this one is a real knock-out.

The main drawback is that a sequel was promised in the mid-80s that has yet to materialize which would certainly, I hope, tie up all the threads. But Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand stands on its own as, I think now, one of my favorite sci-fi novels. It is just so full of ideas and concepts to think about that the thoughtful reader can chew over for some time to come.

Delany himself is an interesting person: a gay black man who wrote across the breadth of subjects from sci-fi to literary criticism to autobiography to hard-core pornography. I found this work to be a notable accomplishment and plan to seek out more of his science fiction writing in particular.

#3: Blackmailer by George Axelrod

I have been a longtime fan of the "Hard Case Crime" series of lost noir reprints with period covers, and I think this latest one--George Axelrod's Blackmailer--is one of my favorites.

Blackmailer, written by Axelrod in the early 50s, starts like one of those flip uptown New York society stories of that period, but surprises with dashes of blazing violence and cold-hearted dealings.

A boozing writer who more than resembles Hemingway, in failing health from alcoholism and on the verge of suicide, sells a manuscript to a high society gadfly who more than resembles Truman Capote. A flinty starlet who resembles any number of actresses at the time is the third side of a poisonous triangle that ends up in double-crossing and death.

I was intrigued to find out, googling Axelrod later, that he was a prominent playwright and screenwriter with only some dabblings into novel writing. It is obvious that Axelrod moved in the society he was writing about, and I'm surprised that his central characters, closely drawn from real people to say the least, did not draw more attention to this work.

Blackmailer is lighter than a lot of Hard Case Crime books in some ways, and reads at a fast clip; but it also packs a sucker punch that will leave the reader thinking.

I read this one in a long snowy weekend in Michigan, purchased from a Books a Million gift card given to me by my daughter for Christmas.

#2: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

I think I was officially the last person on Earth who hadn't read the Harry Potter series. I'm one of those people that have an aversion to whatever bandwagon everybody else seems to be on; sometimes to my detriment, as when I passed on the Harry Potter series. So now that the buzz is over, I thought I would try it.

The first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, is a bright, cheery young adult adventure about a youngster who did not know about his powerful magical legacy until he gets invited to a mystic boarding school. The story covers one school year and centers around Harry's emerging friendships and a growing threat from a supposedly dead wizard who killed Harry's parents. I suppose most everybody else knew all this already.

I found the creativity engaging and the pace brisk, so I am sure I will seek out the next one.

I listened to this on audio book on loan from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana. Jim Dale, the reader, has gotten much acclaim for his performance in the audio series and I know many people who preferred to enjoy the books this way. I would count myself among them.

#1: Spook Country by William Gibson

My first volley into reading 50 books in 2008 is William Gibson's Spook Country. Gibson is probably best known for the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, a prophesy of the internet age written on a typewriter. He wrote a loosely-tied together trilogy including Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, then wrote a second trilogy (starting with Virtual Light) set a little closer to our time. Then he started what I suspect will be another trilogy more or less set in this era, the first being Pattern Recognition (largely dealing with viral video on the Internet) and then this one, Spook Country, with artistic uses for GPS technology at its core. I don't know if this closing in on the modern era is intentional, or whether Gibson stays in one place while the world is catching up to him.

Nonetheless, Spook Country is a somewhat meandering tale of various characters--a journalist for a mysterious European magazine, a prescription drug addict, a strangely talented member of a small crime family, and other eclectic sorts, following various tangents leading towards a mysterious cargo shipping container wandering around the world. The story ambles along for the first two-thirds, finally winding up the various threads in the last third.

All of Gibson's strengths and weaknesses are on display, from his deft prose style to his very loose-limbed plotting and his oft-flaccid denouements. Fans will be with him, but others might be better served seeking out a dog-eared paperback of Neuromancer.

I checked this one out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

And We're Off

My pal the Mighty Caveman convinced me to blog a year's worth of reading alongside him, so as an avid reader who wants to read even more steadily I said okay.

My tastes currently run towards hard-boiled stuff like the Hard Case Crime series, European crime fiction like Arnaldur Indridason and Asa Larsson, "hippie-fi" like Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delany, high fantasy, and a smattering of everything else including an occasional Western and a taste or two from the bestseller list.

Historically I have liked pulp novels, cyberpunk, golden age sci-fi, and people like Cornell Woolrich, Mickey Spillane, Robert Sheckley, Chester B. Himes, Roger Zelazny, Ed McBain, Elmore Leonard, and a lot more.

Right now I always seek out the new Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley novels.

The five best books I have read lately, and recommend to everyone, are THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Diaz, THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD by Kevin Brockmeier, THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE by Jonathan Lethem, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY by Michael Chabon, and CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL by Glen David Gold.

So that's a bit of the flavor you'll find here, though I suspect I will later think of a lot more stuff I should have mentioned, probably a whole different list's worth. Stay tuned.